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I think the level of alarmism is way overblown especially from the author’s perspective coming from Gitpod. There’s so much focus on how Microsoft has this hug

by dangus 2y ago

I think the level of alarmism is way overblown especially from the author’s perspective coming from Gitpod. There’s so much focus on how Microsoft has this huge advantage with VSCode and GitHub Codespaces as a cohesive product. But I think that this entire cloud coding workstation space is rather niche in itself. I think the average user of VSCode, VSCodium, or whatever other fork has full flexibility to not use Microsoft’s preferred extensions and solutions and customize their environment. All this stuff about fracturing an ecosystem basically amounts to picking default extensions and I just don’t know if this is one of those “abuse of market power” things yet. I mean, sure, it can be said that it’s bad how Microsoft is so large that it can single-handedly steer the course of a lot of development trends. At the same time, I don’t think VSCode being such a good product was something that came out of Microsoft’s dominance. They had a lot of luck with that one, they had the right idea, people, and management at the right time. Microsoft makes plenty of software where their big company big dollar investment hasn’t made them a market leader and they have a laundry list of failures and technologies that are trending downward to show for it. I would agree with another comment on this thread: it really does seem like a bunch of complaining from some cloud workspace competitors who want to get a free IDE for themselves that works perfectly.

kragen 2y ago
if your competitors can't sell your product, it isn't open source.
- ocdtrekkie 2y ago
  Fundamentally, this mindset and flaw in the definition is why open source can't prevail. Because open source is absolutely committed to being unsustainable.
  - kragen 2y ago
    on the contrary; it's absolutely committed to not being dependent on a vendor, because being dependent on a vendor makes software unsustainable
    - ocdtrekkie 2y ago
      You miss the point. "Open source is not a business model" but also the OSI has made it increasingly clear it doesn't want it to even be possible to make a business model on top of open source software. That means companies will be, regardless of the desire otherwise, forced into proprietary models, and proprietary development will continue to be the most effective way to put food on the table. Open source will forever be a niche volunteer thing plus some predatory abuse by monopolies because the OSI is not interested in open source being the default way to make software.
      - hollerith 2y ago
        >the OSI has made it increasingly clear it doesn't want it to even be possible to make a business model on top of open source The OSI's definition of open source was worked out in the 1990s and has changed almost not at all. That stability in the meaning of "open source" (or "OSI-approved", if you want to be precise) is a good thing. If you want to experiment with software licenses that (like open source) don't lock the user in or that (like open source) allow forking, but that are better than open source at allowing the maintainer to earn money, then please do -- just don't call your experiment open source. Coin another term. It is not some awful tragedy that those who want to experiment with software licenses cannot use the reputation of the "open source" label to market their offerings. Parenthetically, "nice volunteer thing" is not an accurate description of AOSP, Chromium, Firefox and most Linux desktop software.
        ocdtrekkie 2y ago
        > AOSP, Chromium, Firefox All exploitative projects entirely funded and mostly operated by a monopoly found violating the law or awaiting judgment for such in almost every single first world jurisdiction. Also neither AOSP nor Chromium are used in the real world in practice, over 99.99% of users use proprietary forks. In other words, thank you for supporting my statement entirely. > Linux desktop software Yeah, definitely "not niche".
        2y ago
- muppetman 2y ago
  But you can sell Vscode if you want? Fork it like VSCodium and sell vsmoneycode. You can't sell all the addons, but this is a business model heaps of people use (open product, closed modules/addons)
  - greyman 2y ago
    >But you can sell Vscode if you want? -> yes you technically can but in practice it's almost impossible to be competitive, since for several major languages the best extension isn't open source. Author called it a "fracture".
    - dangus 2y ago
      Isn’t that true for most software though? Gimp isn’t better than Photoshop. LibreOffice isn’t better than Office. Kdenlive isn’t better than DaVinci Resolve/Adobe Premiere/Final Cut Pro. Heck, a whole lot of I know consider IntelliJ a whole lot better than VSCode. Open source isn’t really guaranteed to compete with proprietary software and often doesn’t. The author calls that fracture, but to me an open source product with extensions will logically have both proprietary paid extensions and open source extensions, just like there are vendors who sell closed-source software for Linux. If I sell my proprietary application for Linux and I only distribute it for Ubuntu, that doesn’t make Linux “not really open source.” In my opinion that is normal and expected and isn’t cause for alarm.
      - kragen 2y ago
        No, it isn't true for most software. Firefox and Chrome are better than MSIE or Spyglass Mosaic. TCP/IP is better than CompuServe, AOL, and X.25. Apache and nginx are better than IIS. Perl, Python, and JS are better than PowerBuilder and Visual Basic. GCC is better than Borland C++ and various Unix-vendor C compilers. Even today, GCC is an enormously better C compiler than Visual Studio's, although at least Visual Studio does have a competitive C++ compiler in it. Arduino is better, for most purposes, than various proprietary embedded-vendor IDEs, which themselves mostly use GCC. Linux is better than Unicos, Solaris, and Symbian, though iOS and Microsoft Windows are still competitive. Open-source software has pretty comprehensively replaced proprietary software throughout the computing stack over the last 30 years mostly by being vastly better. Proprietary software is holding onto footholds in a few places, most of which you listed. The general strategy for preventing the situation where "an open source product with extensions will logically have both proprietary paid extensions and open source extensions" is copyleft licenses such as the GNU GPL.
re-thc 2y ago
> But I think that this entire cloud coding workstation space is rather niche in itself. It's common / popular in certain enterprise circles, for "security" and audit reasons. No admin or most permissions on your computer. You get a specific VM with "controls". Anything required might be installed on request. A locked down cloud hosted IDE might just be 1000% easier.
- jamesfinlayson 2y ago
  I've only seen it used for outsourced staff in big enterprises, but yeah - security and compliance.

by dangus 2y ago

kragen 2y ago

if your competitors can't sell your product, it isn't open source.

ocdtrekkie 2y ago
Fundamentally, this mindset and flaw in the definition is why open source can't prevail. Because open source is absolutely committed to being unsustainable.
- kragen 2y ago
  on the contrary; it's absolutely committed to not being dependent on a vendor, because being dependent on a vendor makes software unsustainable
  - ocdtrekkie 2y ago
    You miss the point. "Open source is not a business model" but also the OSI has made it increasingly clear it doesn't want it to even be possible to make a business model on top of open source software. That means companies will be, regardless of the desire otherwise, forced into proprietary models, and proprietary development will continue to be the most effective way to put food on the table. Open source will forever be a niche volunteer thing plus some predatory abuse by monopolies because the OSI is not interested in open source being the default way to make software.
    - hollerith 2y ago
      >the OSI has made it increasingly clear it doesn't want it to even be possible to make a business model on top of open source The OSI's definition of open source was worked out in the 1990s and has changed almost not at all. That stability in the meaning of "open source" (or "OSI-approved", if you want to be precise) is a good thing. If you want to experiment with software licenses that (like open source) don't lock the user in or that (like open source) allow forking, but that are better than open source at allowing the maintainer to earn money, then please do -- just don't call your experiment open source. Coin another term. It is not some awful tragedy that those who want to experiment with software licenses cannot use the reputation of the "open source" label to market their offerings. Parenthetically, "nice volunteer thing" is not an accurate description of AOSP, Chromium, Firefox and most Linux desktop software.
      - ocdtrekkie 2y ago
        > AOSP, Chromium, Firefox All exploitative projects entirely funded and mostly operated by a monopoly found violating the law or awaiting judgment for such in almost every single first world jurisdiction. Also neither AOSP nor Chromium are used in the real world in practice, over 99.99% of users use proprietary forks. In other words, thank you for supporting my statement entirely. > Linux desktop software Yeah, definitely "not niche".
        2y ago
muppetman 2y ago
But you can sell Vscode if you want? Fork it like VSCodium and sell vsmoneycode. You can't sell all the addons, but this is a business model heaps of people use (open product, closed modules/addons)
- greyman 2y ago
  >But you can sell Vscode if you want? -> yes you technically can but in practice it's almost impossible to be competitive, since for several major languages the best extension isn't open source. Author called it a "fracture".
  - dangus 2y ago
    Isn’t that true for most software though? Gimp isn’t better than Photoshop. LibreOffice isn’t better than Office. Kdenlive isn’t better than DaVinci Resolve/Adobe Premiere/Final Cut Pro. Heck, a whole lot of I know consider IntelliJ a whole lot better than VSCode. Open source isn’t really guaranteed to compete with proprietary software and often doesn’t. The author calls that fracture, but to me an open source product with extensions will logically have both proprietary paid extensions and open source extensions, just like there are vendors who sell closed-source software for Linux. If I sell my proprietary application for Linux and I only distribute it for Ubuntu, that doesn’t make Linux “not really open source.” In my opinion that is normal and expected and isn’t cause for alarm.
    - kragen 2y ago
      No, it isn't true for most software. Firefox and Chrome are better than MSIE or Spyglass Mosaic. TCP/IP is better than CompuServe, AOL, and X.25. Apache and nginx are better than IIS. Perl, Python, and JS are better than PowerBuilder and Visual Basic. GCC is better than Borland C++ and various Unix-vendor C compilers. Even today, GCC is an enormously better C compiler than Visual Studio's, although at least Visual Studio does have a competitive C++ compiler in it. Arduino is better, for most purposes, than various proprietary embedded-vendor IDEs, which themselves mostly use GCC. Linux is better than Unicos, Solaris, and Symbian, though iOS and Microsoft Windows are still competitive. Open-source software has pretty comprehensively replaced proprietary software throughout the computing stack over the last 30 years mostly by being vastly better. Proprietary software is holding onto footholds in a few places, most of which you listed. The general strategy for preventing the situation where "an open source product with extensions will logically have both proprietary paid extensions and open source extensions" is copyleft licenses such as the GNU GPL.

re-thc 2y ago

> But I think that this entire cloud coding workstation space is rather niche in itself. It's common / popular in certain enterprise circles, for "security" and audit reasons. No admin or most permissions on your computer. You get a specific VM with "controls". Anything required might be installed on request. A locked down cloud hosted IDE might just be 1000% easier.

jamesfinlayson 2y ago
I've only seen it used for outsourced staff in big enterprises, but yeah - security and compliance.