14 ms·

VSCodium – An Open Source Visual Studio Code Without Trackers

464 points by arthurz 7y ago

formalsystem 7y ago
I had no idea VS Code even had tracking.. Does anyone know what exactly is being tracked?
- danbolt 7y ago
  I might be mistaken, but I think it's for analytics on how the editor is used.
- aaronbrethorst 7y ago
  Chris Dias offers up a suggestion for how to investigate further here: https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues/60#issuecomment-162411071 https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues/60#issuecomment-1... But, speaking as a developer of an open source software product that includes telemetry[1], I expect they're tracking really basic stuff, like: DAU, MAU, edited file types, project size, crash reports, etc. Basically, information that helps to internally justify the continued existence of the project, and data that lets them better prioritize resources on the project. [1] https://github.com/onebusaway/onebusaway-iphone https://github.com/onebusaway/onebusaway-iphone
  - oldmanhorton 7y ago
    Unrelated, OneBusAway is lovely and I just went to settings to make sure I had telemetry enabled for it. I had no idea it was open source!
    - aaronbrethorst 7y ago
      Thank you! I can always use more hands with it, too. I’m essentially the only person working on the iOS version right now, and I do it pretty much entirely on a volunteer basis (ie nights and weekends, when I’m lucky)
  - taneq 7y ago
    > I expect they're tracking really basic stuff [...] information that helps to internally justify the continued existence of the project, and data that lets them better prioritize resources on the project. This is my big issue with almost all analytics setups. Sure, you expect that they're probably tracking stuff like that, which is perfectly reasonable and benefits everyone. But when you look at the privacy policy inevitably you find that the data they "may" collect is incredibly vaguely defined, wide-ranging, and generally not actually limited (they use phrases like "we collect data such as..." and "some examples of data we collect are..."). And then what they do with the data is also left unrestricted by phrases like "ways we use the data include..." And then when you point this out, everyone tells you that you're being paranoid and they're just covering themselves and don't be silly. And then when they do precisely what their policy legally enables them to do (cough Facebook cough Cambridge Analytica cough) everyone is aghast.
    - alkonaut 7y ago
      I wouldn’t (unfortunately) ever bother with what terms say. They are written by a legal person who worries about future legal issues. This is basically down to the reputation of the vendor and what information I can guess they gather based on what sort of outrage they would face if they cross a line. There are two messages here: 1. Legal. Basically a catch all that says they might sample your blood in the future 2. Non-legal e.g developers. Says they gather harmless statistics. Obviously #1 smells. But that’s how US corporate legal culture works. The judgement I have to do is whether the vendor can be trusted to do only what they say in message #2. I wouldn’t trust all companies in this respect, especially not those that trade in information like Facebook, but I do give Microsoft the benefit of the doubt.
timdorr 7y ago
Is this needed? You can disable telemetry from the settings: https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/supporting/FAQ#_how-to-disable-telemetry-reporting https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/supporting/FAQ#_how-to-di...
- jeanlucas 7y ago
  And it's possible to opt out on install... It's not like hidden or anything
  - btgeekboy 7y ago
    You got an installer with yours?!
    - windexh8er 7y ago
      They're probably using Windows.
      - TimTheTinker 7y ago
        It’s easy to forget just how many things require an installer-wizard-type process on Windows after being on macOS and Linux for a few years.
        naikrovek 7y ago
        Very few things, if any, REQUIRE an installer on Windows; it's just common (and annoying) that most software is distributed this way for that platform.
        orbifold 7y ago
        I for one prefer that the developer of an application takes responsibility for its installation. That way you can blame them if it does not work. On Linux distros many packages are close to uselesss because they are outdated or have been modified in weird ways incompatible with tutorials and documentation. This is especially true for all scientific software.
Vanit 7y ago
Would've been good if it detailed what its tracking. I assume its update notifications and usage telemetry, which is fine by me.
jameskraus 7y ago
I suspect the tracking in VSCode is mainly used to improve the product. It's probably in my best interest, and the interest of the community as a whole to leave tracking on. I mean, I get it, HN is usually a more skeptical and security-focused crowd. At the same time, it's likely MS will just take that information and tailor their bugfixes and features to the things I need most, so by all means I want them to have it.
- jsgo 7y ago
  I completely agree and I’m in the same boat (I’ll continue to use VS Code). That being said, it’s somewhat amazing we are now in a time when a Microsoft product could have aspects users don’t approve of and rebuild it without it: everyone wins.
- z3t4 7y ago
  It maybe starts with simple statistics. But then you want to know what features the user use, then you want to know what other programs they have installed. Then you want to know what the users search for on the web. etc. It's a slippery slope.
  - joshschreuder 7y ago
    You've literally described a slippery slope fallacy
    - jlawson 7y ago
      "Slippery slope" is not a fallacy. Life is full of slippery slopes in terms of behavior.
      - dymk 7y ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slippery_slope#Non-fallacious_usage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slippery_slope#Non-fallacious_... No, that still falls into fallacious usage. The user doesn't justify why the steps of their assertion follow after the other. Just that they... do.
azhenley 7y ago
Discussion from 3 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19619956 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19619956
ramon 7y ago
This is awesome, it's a lot faster than VSCode. I can now use a low end machine to code finally haha. No need for 12GB Ram notebooks anymore.
- Someone1234 7y ago
  Likely placebo. There's made no changes that would make it faster.
  - raidicy 7y ago
    In the main version of Vscode it will give me micro stutters when I use WSR+ vocola. _So far_ there's been none of that with vscodium, however this could be because as with this fresh install there's no plugins.
    - ramon 7y ago
      Same here! I cannot understand why it's a lot faster than VSCode, it's weird. I know have to try the plugins to see.
      - sbjustin 7y ago
        Is it possible the "slowness" was DNS lookups possibly for the reporting?
- smadurange 7y ago
  12G to use VS Code? LOL.
  - gibbitz 7y ago
    I gave up on vscode when it locked up on a 32gb machine. Seeing that there's analytics code inside clears that right up. I assumed the problems I had with electron based apps were the overhead of running a browser on top of the application. The real problem is that it's running 1990s omniture code. Thankfully they haven't added auto-play video to the search yet...
madprops 7y ago
Isn't the use of the vscode store extensions proprietary?
- jakear 7y ago
  It is, but people try to get away with it by using a mistakenly committed config file from a few years back to argue that the URL’s are now MIT’d. The commit was quickly reverted, but they didn’t rewrite history to totally remove it, and now here we are.
  - colejohnson66 7y ago
    Source?
    - marquis-chacha 7y ago
      Check the sibling comment
  - wongarsu 7y ago
    That sounds like they legally released it under MIT. They legally can't just revoke a license grant, even completely unpublishing it by rewriting git history wouldn't solve that.
    - madprops 7y ago
      I want Microsoft to share the vscode extensions, but that reasoning seems weird to me. MS is hosting the extensions, they could decide what applications get access to them. But also saying anything published by mistake immediately makes it part of the current state of an open source project seems too violent. Software authors should decide the terms of their software, maybe past versions maintain the license included in them, but they are not eternal, should the author decide so. If at some point I want to turn my application more commercial friendly by amending the license or changing it completely, and people tell me "No haha sorry you released as MIT at some point so it's now free forever mate" I would get pissed off and stray away from open source altogether. At least this is how the "you can't revoke a license" argument feels to me. But like I said, past versions that include a specific license should still be governed by that license.
rl3 7y ago
Is there any difference between this and the version in Arch's community repo?[0] Obviously VSCodium appears to target more distros. From my experience code (Arch) is entirely debranded, so I can't imagine telemetry was left in. [0] https://www.archlinux.org/packages/community/x86_64/code/ https://www.archlinux.org/packages/community/x86_64/code/
- quzyp 7y ago
  Is it? I honestly never had a closer look, but the upstream url just points to the regular MS github repo.
  - rl3 7y ago
    To answer my own question: no difference in terms of telemetry. Both pull from MS source and are prebuilt, so there should be no telemetry in either. This explains it well: https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium#why https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium#why In case anyone wants to compare the minutiae: https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium/blob/master/build.sh https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium/blob/master/build.sh https://git.archlinux.org/svntogit/community.git/tree/trunk/PKGBUILD?h=packages/code https://git.archlinux.org/svntogit/community.git/tree/trunk/...
- deleted 7y ago
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jakear 7y ago
The process for making this yourself is basically as simple as: git clone gulp build Consider doing that before running binaries from more or less unknown sources. I don’t remember the exact gulp command off hand, but if you check the gulpfile there are myriad build configs for full minified packaged builds.
writepub 7y ago
I derive immense value from MSFT's VSCode. I don't think the telemetry in VSCode is similar to cookie tracking by Facebook et al. Frankly, I do not understand the fiscal benefit the Microsoft from VSCode, but I'd like to continue supporting Microsoft's version, as the telemetry from an IDE don't seem to be all encompassing privacy wise, like web tracking
pooya13 7y ago
Are they just compiling the source code and adding their own logo or have they actually modified it?
fxfan 7y ago
Are we still on with the FUD about telemetry? It doesn't help anybody except probably the one guy who 'Showed Microsoft'. Telemetry helps improve products and opt-out means the product company will miss out on the behavior of power users thereby not being able to optimize their software for their usage.
- paavoova 7y ago
  > Telemetry helps improve products and opt-out Did you mean to write "opt-in", or are you suggesting it's OK for software to refuse the choice to opt out of data tracking? "Power users" simply do not use such software or block connections via firewall.
  - fxfan 7y ago
    Please don't spread FUD. Tracking makes it sound like I'm being followed. This is collecting usage-data.
    - paavoova 7y ago
      GPS-related telemetry, say in modern cars or smartphones, is akin to being followed. The latter isn't even anonymized, e.g. recently police identified suspects by issuing a warrant to Google for devices in the vicinity, or Tesla having all the car data in case of an accident. Web tracking such as analytics or canvas, things like "advertising tags" being assigned to your profile, is you being digitally followed across various sites you visit. "Usage-data" decided by developers, malicious or otherwise, may not be just usage data from the user's perspective. You can hardly dismiss all telemetry concerns as invalid when "telemetry" is a catchall term for most any data collection. And the other side of it is the user and being in control of the software they run, which entails opt-in or at the minimum leaving the option to opt-out.
deleted 7y ago
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telaelit 7y ago
This is great. I think I would be okay with companies like Microsoft collecting data on me if they make it more clear what data they are collecting, what they’re using the data for, having the ability to disable data collection (defaulted to disable preferably), and being able to download and have a guid to understand my own data. As a dev myself I know all of that is difficult and sounds ridiculous, but I really do think we have a right to the data collected on us and on our behavior. Transparency, ownership, and access, that’s all I ask.
sonnyblarney 7y ago
I do not trust Facebook with my personal data on their site, but I would absolutely trust them to turn off arbitrary telemetry data if in fact it said it was 'off'. I just don't think there's a big evil conflict of interest or whatever for this stuff to get slippery. No yet anyhow.
- ru999gol 7y ago
  > Facebook [...] I would absolutely trust them there is no hope for you then I suppose
userbinator 7y ago
There's already a comment here, and I've also personally experienced just from talking with others offline, that a lot of people don't even know VSCode had telemetry, despite it mentioned several times in the product itself and its documentation. They (and remember, these people are supposedly developers) either ignored it, or just didn't read the docs. I guess a big WARNING banner might scare users away, but it's still a bit disturbing to see such a lax attitude towards tools which developers use to work with a software company's most valuable assets. A lot of people, developers included, don't really read EULAs, and it's the same reason (traditional) spyware could thrive: no doubt they all specify in their license agreements the fact that they all collect information, but approximately no one reads those. Put it another way, would you want your compiler or other parts of your toolchain sending information about all the source files it processed? I wouldn't consider myself particularly paranoid when it comes to security, maybe even looser than the average on HN, and even then I wouldn't use such tools. I wonder how many companies have already banned their use...
- luckylion 7y ago
  > They (and remember, these people are supposedly developers) either ignored it, or just didn't read the docs. Or they forgot and their stance on it changed. I vaguely remembered (or thought I did) having seen it. Just checked my settings and it's disabled. I've gotten way more privacy minded in the last 24 months, so I figured I might have said "yeah, you can collect data" back when I first installed it, but now I'd prefer they didn't. A middle way would be to periodically remind people, "hey, you've consented to sending anonymous usage data to us so we can make better decisions. I just wanted to confirm that you're still cool with this" once a year or something, because at least for me, "does this app collect telemetry data?" is not something I constantly have in my working memory.
  - carlmr 7y ago
    I have it enabled on my personal computer, but disabled on my work computer. I like them improving their product, so I want to support that, but at work it's a bit different.
  - 7y ago
f055 7y ago
Some developers are a funny bunch, always chasing after the next cool thing: either a language, an editor, a stack or a methodology. I’ve watched the RoR hype, the Agile frenzy, the Sublime Text popularity, the Angular and React mania... The truth of the matter is that while a developer needs to keep up with new tech, often “new” doesn’t mean better, just different. Choosing the right tools for the job at hand from all the available ones, not just the “cool” ones, is an often missed quality of a good developer.
chappi42 7y ago
The fossmint.com website is full with advertisement, social links and an annoying popup. Somehow funny to visit there to avoid trackers...
ru999gol 7y ago
I would suspect anyone who cared about things like that, would never even considered using a microsoft or apple product to begin with. Can I just point out how hilariously predictable the opinions on HN are? The comments here defending Microsoft spyware are hilarious.
m0zg 7y ago
Meh. I just set the environment variable in my dotfiles which opts me out of telemetry. I can't recall a case where MS would outright lie about stuff like this. I.e. with Win 10 they flat out tell you you can't disable all telemetry, and in the case of VSCode they're targeting a real hard-ass demographic, so I trust them to not track me when I told them not to. I also don't use VSCode very often, though.
Yuioup 7y ago
Are you allowed to use .NET Core debugging with VSCodium? https://github.com/dotnet/core/issues/505 https://github.com/dotnet/core/issues/505
jlgaddis 7y ago
If you are concerned with privacy and use any Microsoft products (you're already making a mistake by doing so in the first place but) I would recommend, by default, blocking all Internet access to/from the host (edit: by default; make exceptions as needed, obviously). I've got one Windows machine here, just so I can run one specific client that I have to use for an internally-hosted application. That machine doesn't have a default route, just a single static route that lets it communicate with the (internal) things it needs to and, just for good measure, there are firewall rules (on the router connected to my upstream) that block any traffic to/from this machine and the Internet. (Sadly, I would not be surprised to learn that it can "fallback" to using DNS queries or some such to report back to the mothership.) I think we'll eventually get to the point where, in general, devices won't have a default route. It might take a while, though -- currently, way too many people are still completely okay with every device and application they use spying on them and reporting back on what they do. So-called "default deny" firewall policies for incoming traffic are pretty common nowadays. I can't wait for "default deny" policies for outbound traffic to become standard as well.
eibrahim 7y ago
Hmmm. Do I trust Microsoft or some unknown person on the internet?
- asjo 7y ago
  Who has the better track record?
  - eibrahim 7y ago
    Who has more to lose and who has more scrutiny?
slim 7y ago
this is great. we could make it a proper fork and get rid of the constant nagging of notifications wanting to manage your git repo, install plugins, etc...
bartread 7y ago
This is nice and all but, from my perspective, the biggest issue with VSCode isn't the telemetry but the battery drain. Even though I prefer VSCode to Sublime the negative effect on battery life, particularly for sizeable projects, forced me back to Sublime for most use cases.
- _bear 7y ago
  It uses Electron.. which is packaged Chromium. That's the hog.
mncharity 7y ago
VSCode seems rather monolithic. Skimming it briefly, there seems code which might be usefully repackaged as npm packages for service elsewhere. (I didn't check whether npm packages exist providing similar functionality.) This can certainly be the right call for a project. But maybe it's an untapped opportunity for the broader community? Has anyone looked at running a tracking fork, say mechanically massaging vscode into a monorepo? As I explore opportunities for coding inside VR, having a more integrated ecosystem for creating IDEs would be nice.
- pavanagrawal123 7y ago
  Check out theia
  - mncharity 7y ago
    Thanks... https://github.com/theia-ide/theia https://github.com/theia-ide/theia
roryokane 7y ago
Everyone is focusing on telemetry being turned off by default, but I think the real benefit of VSCodium is that it doesn’t force you to agree to the non-free license https://code.visualstudio.com/License/ https://code.visualstudio.com/License/ that comes with standard VS Code (which is different from the MIT license in the repo, https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/blob/master/LICENSE.txt https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/blob/master/LICENSE.txt). See the issue https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues/17996 https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues/17996 for discussion of the problems with that license.
ShiroiAkuma 7y ago
I shall still prefer to go with the usual editors like sublime, vim. At the very least I can be certain that vim is not reading the files I am editing.

464 points by arthurz 7y ago

formalsystem 7y ago

I had no idea VS Code even had tracking.. Does anyone know what exactly is being tracked?

danbolt 7y ago
I might be mistaken, but I think it's for analytics on how the editor is used.
aaronbrethorst 7y ago
Chris Dias offers up a suggestion for how to investigate further here: https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues/60#issuecomment-162411071 https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues/60#issuecomment-1... But, speaking as a developer of an open source software product that includes telemetry[1], I expect they're tracking really basic stuff, like: DAU, MAU, edited file types, project size, crash reports, etc. Basically, information that helps to internally justify the continued existence of the project, and data that lets them better prioritize resources on the project. [1] https://github.com/onebusaway/onebusaway-iphone https://github.com/onebusaway/onebusaway-iphone
- oldmanhorton 7y ago
  Unrelated, OneBusAway is lovely and I just went to settings to make sure I had telemetry enabled for it. I had no idea it was open source!
  - aaronbrethorst 7y ago
    Thank you! I can always use more hands with it, too. I’m essentially the only person working on the iOS version right now, and I do it pretty much entirely on a volunteer basis (ie nights and weekends, when I’m lucky)
- taneq 7y ago
  > I expect they're tracking really basic stuff [...] information that helps to internally justify the continued existence of the project, and data that lets them better prioritize resources on the project. This is my big issue with almost all analytics setups. Sure, you expect that they're probably tracking stuff like that, which is perfectly reasonable and benefits everyone. But when you look at the privacy policy inevitably you find that the data they "may" collect is incredibly vaguely defined, wide-ranging, and generally not actually limited (they use phrases like "we collect data such as..." and "some examples of data we collect are..."). And then what they do with the data is also left unrestricted by phrases like "ways we use the data include..." And then when you point this out, everyone tells you that you're being paranoid and they're just covering themselves and don't be silly. And then when they do precisely what their policy legally enables them to do (cough Facebook cough Cambridge Analytica cough) everyone is aghast.
  - alkonaut 7y ago
    I wouldn’t (unfortunately) ever bother with what terms say. They are written by a legal person who worries about future legal issues. This is basically down to the reputation of the vendor and what information I can guess they gather based on what sort of outrage they would face if they cross a line. There are two messages here: 1. Legal. Basically a catch all that says they might sample your blood in the future 2. Non-legal e.g developers. Says they gather harmless statistics. Obviously #1 smells. But that’s how US corporate legal culture works. The judgement I have to do is whether the vendor can be trusted to do only what they say in message #2. I wouldn’t trust all companies in this respect, especially not those that trade in information like Facebook, but I do give Microsoft the benefit of the doubt.

timdorr 7y ago

Is this needed? You can disable telemetry from the settings: https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/supporting/FAQ#_how-to-disable-telemetry-reporting https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/supporting/FAQ#_how-to-di...

jeanlucas 7y ago
And it's possible to opt out on install... It's not like hidden or anything
- btgeekboy 7y ago
  You got an installer with yours?!
  - windexh8er 7y ago
    They're probably using Windows.
    - TimTheTinker 7y ago
      It’s easy to forget just how many things require an installer-wizard-type process on Windows after being on macOS and Linux for a few years.
      - naikrovek 7y ago
        Very few things, if any, REQUIRE an installer on Windows; it's just common (and annoying) that most software is distributed this way for that platform.
        orbifold 7y ago
        I for one prefer that the developer of an application takes responsibility for its installation. That way you can blame them if it does not work. On Linux distros many packages are close to uselesss because they are outdated or have been modified in weird ways incompatible with tutorials and documentation. This is especially true for all scientific software.

Vanit 7y ago

Would've been good if it detailed what its tracking. I assume its update notifications and usage telemetry, which is fine by me.

jameskraus 7y ago

I suspect the tracking in VSCode is mainly used to improve the product. It's probably in my best interest, and the interest of the community as a whole to leave tracking on. I mean, I get it, HN is usually a more skeptical and security-focused crowd. At the same time, it's likely MS will just take that information and tailor their bugfixes and features to the things I need most, so by all means I want them to have it.

jsgo 7y ago
I completely agree and I’m in the same boat (I’ll continue to use VS Code). That being said, it’s somewhat amazing we are now in a time when a Microsoft product could have aspects users don’t approve of and rebuild it without it: everyone wins.
z3t4 7y ago
It maybe starts with simple statistics. But then you want to know what features the user use, then you want to know what other programs they have installed. Then you want to know what the users search for on the web. etc. It's a slippery slope.
- joshschreuder 7y ago
  You've literally described a slippery slope fallacy
  - jlawson 7y ago
    "Slippery slope" is not a fallacy. Life is full of slippery slopes in terms of behavior.
    - dymk 7y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slippery_slope#Non-fallacious_usage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slippery_slope#Non-fallacious_... No, that still falls into fallacious usage. The user doesn't justify why the steps of their assertion follow after the other. Just that they... do.

azhenley 7y ago

Discussion from 3 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19619956 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19619956

ramon 7y ago

This is awesome, it's a lot faster than VSCode. I can now use a low end machine to code finally haha. No need for 12GB Ram notebooks anymore.

Someone1234 7y ago
Likely placebo. There's made no changes that would make it faster.
- raidicy 7y ago
  In the main version of Vscode it will give me micro stutters when I use WSR+ vocola. _So far_ there's been none of that with vscodium, however this could be because as with this fresh install there's no plugins.
  - ramon 7y ago
    Same here! I cannot understand why it's a lot faster than VSCode, it's weird. I know have to try the plugins to see.
    - sbjustin 7y ago
      Is it possible the "slowness" was DNS lookups possibly for the reporting?
smadurange 7y ago
12G to use VS Code? LOL.
- gibbitz 7y ago
  I gave up on vscode when it locked up on a 32gb machine. Seeing that there's analytics code inside clears that right up. I assumed the problems I had with electron based apps were the overhead of running a browser on top of the application. The real problem is that it's running 1990s omniture code. Thankfully they haven't added auto-play video to the search yet...

madprops 7y ago

Isn't the use of the vscode store extensions proprietary?

jakear 7y ago
It is, but people try to get away with it by using a mistakenly committed config file from a few years back to argue that the URL’s are now MIT’d. The commit was quickly reverted, but they didn’t rewrite history to totally remove it, and now here we are.
- colejohnson66 7y ago
  Source?
  - marquis-chacha 7y ago
    Check the sibling comment
- wongarsu 7y ago
  That sounds like they legally released it under MIT. They legally can't just revoke a license grant, even completely unpublishing it by rewriting git history wouldn't solve that.
  - madprops 7y ago
    I want Microsoft to share the vscode extensions, but that reasoning seems weird to me. MS is hosting the extensions, they could decide what applications get access to them. But also saying anything published by mistake immediately makes it part of the current state of an open source project seems too violent. Software authors should decide the terms of their software, maybe past versions maintain the license included in them, but they are not eternal, should the author decide so. If at some point I want to turn my application more commercial friendly by amending the license or changing it completely, and people tell me "No haha sorry you released as MIT at some point so it's now free forever mate" I would get pissed off and stray away from open source altogether. At least this is how the "you can't revoke a license" argument feels to me. But like I said, past versions that include a specific license should still be governed by that license.

rl3 7y ago

Is there any difference between this and the version in Arch's community repo?[0] Obviously VSCodium appears to target more distros. From my experience code (Arch) is entirely debranded, so I can't imagine telemetry was left in. [0] https://www.archlinux.org/packages/community/x86_64/code/ https://www.archlinux.org/packages/community/x86_64/code/

quzyp 7y ago
Is it? I honestly never had a closer look, but the upstream url just points to the regular MS github repo.
- rl3 7y ago
  To answer my own question: no difference in terms of telemetry. Both pull from MS source and are prebuilt, so there should be no telemetry in either. This explains it well: https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium#why https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium#why In case anyone wants to compare the minutiae: https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium/blob/master/build.sh https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium/blob/master/build.sh https://git.archlinux.org/svntogit/community.git/tree/trunk/PKGBUILD?h=packages/code https://git.archlinux.org/svntogit/community.git/tree/trunk/...
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

jakear 7y ago

The process for making this yourself is basically as simple as: git clone gulp build Consider doing that before running binaries from more or less unknown sources. I don’t remember the exact gulp command off hand, but if you check the gulpfile there are myriad build configs for full minified packaged builds.

writepub 7y ago

I derive immense value from MSFT's VSCode. I don't think the telemetry in VSCode is similar to cookie tracking by Facebook et al. Frankly, I do not understand the fiscal benefit the Microsoft from VSCode, but I'd like to continue supporting Microsoft's version, as the telemetry from an IDE don't seem to be all encompassing privacy wise, like web tracking

pooya13 7y ago

Are they just compiling the source code and adding their own logo or have they actually modified it?

fxfan 7y ago

Are we still on with the FUD about telemetry? It doesn't help anybody except probably the one guy who 'Showed Microsoft'. Telemetry helps improve products and opt-out means the product company will miss out on the behavior of power users thereby not being able to optimize their software for their usage.

paavoova 7y ago
> Telemetry helps improve products and opt-out Did you mean to write "opt-in", or are you suggesting it's OK for software to refuse the choice to opt out of data tracking? "Power users" simply do not use such software or block connections via firewall.
- fxfan 7y ago
  Please don't spread FUD. Tracking makes it sound like I'm being followed. This is collecting usage-data.
  - paavoova 7y ago
    GPS-related telemetry, say in modern cars or smartphones, is akin to being followed. The latter isn't even anonymized, e.g. recently police identified suspects by issuing a warrant to Google for devices in the vicinity, or Tesla having all the car data in case of an accident. Web tracking such as analytics or canvas, things like "advertising tags" being assigned to your profile, is you being digitally followed across various sites you visit. "Usage-data" decided by developers, malicious or otherwise, may not be just usage data from the user's perspective. You can hardly dismiss all telemetry concerns as invalid when "telemetry" is a catchall term for most any data collection. And the other side of it is the user and being in control of the software they run, which entails opt-in or at the minimum leaving the option to opt-out.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

telaelit 7y ago

This is great. I think I would be okay with companies like Microsoft collecting data on me if they make it more clear what data they are collecting, what they’re using the data for, having the ability to disable data collection (defaulted to disable preferably), and being able to download and have a guid to understand my own data. As a dev myself I know all of that is difficult and sounds ridiculous, but I really do think we have a right to the data collected on us and on our behavior. Transparency, ownership, and access, that’s all I ask.

sonnyblarney 7y ago

I do not trust Facebook with my personal data on their site, but I would absolutely trust them to turn off arbitrary telemetry data if in fact it said it was 'off'. I just don't think there's a big evil conflict of interest or whatever for this stuff to get slippery. No yet anyhow.

ru999gol 7y ago
> Facebook [...] I would absolutely trust them there is no hope for you then I suppose

userbinator 7y ago

There's already a comment here, and I've also personally experienced just from talking with others offline, that a lot of people don't even know VSCode had telemetry, despite it mentioned several times in the product itself and its documentation. They (and remember, these people are supposedly developers) either ignored it, or just didn't read the docs. I guess a big WARNING banner might scare users away, but it's still a bit disturbing to see such a lax attitude towards tools which developers use to work with a software company's most valuable assets. A lot of people, developers included, don't really read EULAs, and it's the same reason (traditional) spyware could thrive: no doubt they all specify in their license agreements the fact that they all collect information, but approximately no one reads those. Put it another way, would you want your compiler or other parts of your toolchain sending information about all the source files it processed? I wouldn't consider myself particularly paranoid when it comes to security, maybe even looser than the average on HN, and even then I wouldn't use such tools. I wonder how many companies have already banned their use...

luckylion 7y ago
> They (and remember, these people are supposedly developers) either ignored it, or just didn't read the docs. Or they forgot and their stance on it changed. I vaguely remembered (or thought I did) having seen it. Just checked my settings and it's disabled. I've gotten way more privacy minded in the last 24 months, so I figured I might have said "yeah, you can collect data" back when I first installed it, but now I'd prefer they didn't. A middle way would be to periodically remind people, "hey, you've consented to sending anonymous usage data to us so we can make better decisions. I just wanted to confirm that you're still cool with this" once a year or something, because at least for me, "does this app collect telemetry data?" is not something I constantly have in my working memory.
- carlmr 7y ago
  I have it enabled on my personal computer, but disabled on my work computer. I like them improving their product, so I want to support that, but at work it's a bit different.
- 7y ago

f055 7y ago

Some developers are a funny bunch, always chasing after the next cool thing: either a language, an editor, a stack or a methodology. I’ve watched the RoR hype, the Agile frenzy, the Sublime Text popularity, the Angular and React mania... The truth of the matter is that while a developer needs to keep up with new tech, often “new” doesn’t mean better, just different. Choosing the right tools for the job at hand from all the available ones, not just the “cool” ones, is an often missed quality of a good developer.

chappi42 7y ago

The fossmint.com website is full with advertisement, social links and an annoying popup. Somehow funny to visit there to avoid trackers...

ru999gol 7y ago

I would suspect anyone who cared about things like that, would never even considered using a microsoft or apple product to begin with. Can I just point out how hilariously predictable the opinions on HN are? The comments here defending Microsoft spyware are hilarious.

m0zg 7y ago

Meh. I just set the environment variable in my dotfiles which opts me out of telemetry. I can't recall a case where MS would outright lie about stuff like this. I.e. with Win 10 they flat out tell you you can't disable all telemetry, and in the case of VSCode they're targeting a real hard-ass demographic, so I trust them to not track me when I told them not to. I also don't use VSCode very often, though.

Yuioup 7y ago

Are you allowed to use .NET Core debugging with VSCodium? https://github.com/dotnet/core/issues/505 https://github.com/dotnet/core/issues/505

jlgaddis 7y ago

If you are concerned with privacy and use any Microsoft products (you're already making a mistake by doing so in the first place but) I would recommend, by default, blocking all Internet access to/from the host (edit: by default; make exceptions as needed, obviously). I've got one Windows machine here, just so I can run one specific client that I have to use for an internally-hosted application. That machine doesn't have a default route, just a single static route that lets it communicate with the (internal) things it needs to and, just for good measure, there are firewall rules (on the router connected to my upstream) that block any traffic to/from this machine and the Internet. (Sadly, I would not be surprised to learn that it can "fallback" to using DNS queries or some such to report back to the mothership.) I think we'll eventually get to the point where, in general, devices won't have a default route. It might take a while, though -- currently, way too many people are still completely okay with every device and application they use spying on them and reporting back on what they do. So-called "default deny" firewall policies for incoming traffic are pretty common nowadays. I can't wait for "default deny" policies for outbound traffic to become standard as well.

eibrahim 7y ago

Hmmm. Do I trust Microsoft or some unknown person on the internet?

asjo 7y ago
Who has the better track record?
- eibrahim 7y ago
  Who has more to lose and who has more scrutiny?

slim 7y ago

this is great. we could make it a proper fork and get rid of the constant nagging of notifications wanting to manage your git repo, install plugins, etc...

bartread 7y ago

This is nice and all but, from my perspective, the biggest issue with VSCode isn't the telemetry but the battery drain. Even though I prefer VSCode to Sublime the negative effect on battery life, particularly for sizeable projects, forced me back to Sublime for most use cases.

_bear 7y ago
It uses Electron.. which is packaged Chromium. That's the hog.

mncharity 7y ago

VSCode seems rather monolithic. Skimming it briefly, there seems code which might be usefully repackaged as npm packages for service elsewhere. (I didn't check whether npm packages exist providing similar functionality.) This can certainly be the right call for a project. But maybe it's an untapped opportunity for the broader community? Has anyone looked at running a tracking fork, say mechanically massaging vscode into a monorepo? As I explore opportunities for coding inside VR, having a more integrated ecosystem for creating IDEs would be nice.

pavanagrawal123 7y ago
Check out theia
- mncharity 7y ago
  Thanks... https://github.com/theia-ide/theia https://github.com/theia-ide/theia

roryokane 7y ago

Everyone is focusing on telemetry being turned off by default, but I think the real benefit of VSCodium is that it doesn’t force you to agree to the non-free license https://code.visualstudio.com/License/ https://code.visualstudio.com/License/ that comes with standard VS Code (which is different from the MIT license in the repo, https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/blob/master/LICENSE.txt https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/blob/master/LICENSE.txt). See the issue https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues/17996 https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues/17996 for discussion of the problems with that license.

ShiroiAkuma 7y ago

I shall still prefer to go with the usual editors like sublime, vim. At the very least I can be certain that vim is not reading the files I am editing.