4 ms·

"The free software Microsoft is giving away isn't open enough" has to be one of the weirdest modern takes. I remember when "free IDE" meant "Eclipse" or "vim wi

"The free software Microsoft is giving away isn't open enough" has to be one of the weirdest modern takes. I remember when "free IDE" meant "Eclipse" or "vim with a billion extensions". From what I can tell, Microsoft isn't even sabotaging open alternatives, they're just Not As Good. That sucks, but that's just how it works when you're using software made by a company that likes to pay its staff and still make a profit. I welcome everyone who feels entitled to the source code of Microsoft's very best software to see what true open source, maintained by an independent non-profit organisation looks like. You'll get an IDE that's functional, maybe even features a real debugger, but you'll probably wish you could go back not long after. People are taking software given to them free of charge for granted. It's not that long ago that you had to buy IDEs for hundreds or thousands of dollars and you had to buy the upgrade if you wanted the next version a couple of years later.

derkades 2y ago
> From what I can tell, Microsoft isn't even sabotaging open alternatives I think they are. VSIX extensions are supposed to be some sort of open standard, but some Microsoft extensions like Pylance actively refuse to work if they detect running in something other than Microsoft's build of VS Code.
- jeroenhd 2y ago
  Microsoft's extensions don't work, but that's Microsoft's choice. Whatever open source alternative for Pylance exists (if any) will work just fine. If they messed with VSCode to sabotage OpenPylance or whatever the situation would be different, but in this case people are just looking a gift horse in the mouth.
  - WorldMaker 2y ago
    Pylance is Pyright (open source) plus custom Small Language Models and other proprietary sauce. Pylance isn't sabotaging Pyright, because it is built on top of it. You can find alternative extensions that are "just" Pyright. (They have a fraction of the users because the SLM-based magic of Pylance is a nicer experience if you can "afford" it [based on your principles].) Pyright is maybe sabotaging competitive projects MyPy and Ruff by being "knighted" as a part of Pylance, but that's not generally how open source competition is seen to exist. There also doesn't currently seem to be competition for the proprietary bits of Pylance outside of the LLM space. That's maybe catching up quickly, but Microsoft's more dedicated SLM models might still be leaders in the space, and Microsoft wanting to keep models proprietary while they are competitive shouldn't be a surprise.
    - ghuntley 2y ago
      Encourage you to look at the bigger picture. What happens when there’s an official extension by a 3rd party vendor SDK that defines a dependency on the proprietary language server/extension. It’ll work fine for “Visual Studio Code” but all these OSS forks (inc recent venture capital funding for AI ones) gets wrecked. It turns into a game of having to iterate through the graph and trying to convince official SDKs to change their product direction. Pushing shit up hill…
- ryanjshaw 2y ago
  How is this different from arguing that Linux is not open source because Oracle won't run on it without a valid license?
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
SamuelAdams 2y ago
Exactly. Look at the Ashai Linux project. They are doing tremendous work, but getting basic feature parity with a now 3 year old laptop is still ongoing work. Then once feature parity is done, performance problems are next, if they ever get addressed and completed. I love the idea for open source software, but the very best software in todays world is always something you have to pay for.
riiii 2y ago
>"The free software Microsoft is giving away isn't open enough" This is not a quote from the article and isn't what the article is saying. It's effectively suggestig that devs are being duped and MS goals are closing essential parts down.
hiddencost 2y ago
Imagine a hypothetical world in which a nonprofit funded by donations and grants from nonprofits and governments funded your code editor. That was eclipse. There are lots of great examples of well funded open source software projects. Companies have a history of killing them off, which hurts everyone.
iLemming 2y ago
So my problem with MSFT's big plan is that I simply don't know it. I do know the price I'm paying for using Emacs and Vim. Even though (in theory) they are completely free, in reality there's a price there. Vim and Emacs require time, patience, and dedication, just like any other tools. I know who gains from my choice - myself, the community, and the industry. I knew exactly how JetBrains profited from my choice of using IntelliJ in the past - I paid for the license and renewed it every year. But what's MSFT's scheme here? They're giving me this beautiful, nice tool completely for "free"? What price will I have to pay for that choice in the future? I'm sorry, but I think every dev should remain at least a bit skeptical, do you truly believe that Microsoft, a colossal corporation with a market capitalization comparable to the GDP of Germany, spends an enormous amount of resources to build "a free" code editor, because... I dunno, they love you or something?
- AshAnnouncer 2y ago
  > But what's MSFT's scheme here? They realized by pushing typescript they can drive companies away from java, then when those companies will realize typescript sucks they'll be redirected to c#
  - neonsunset 2y ago
    It would be funny if it worked that way but luckily or unluckily it doesn't.
- CrimsonCape 2y ago
  We are in uncharted territory. This major corporation has a "big plan" that relies on making their product offerings "open source" while simultaneously surrounding it with a minefield such that the "open source" aspect is camouflage/subterfuge. "Subterfuge Source" has a nice ring to it, and abbreviated "SS" really drives the point home as well.
crabbone 2y ago
> Microsoft's very best software This has to be a joke, right? Microsoft's software is absolute nightmare pile of trash. > People are taking software given to them free of charge for granted. Whooosh: this is the point made by the author of the article zooming over your head. The point is that closed-source software that pretends to be open-source will affect even those who don't need or want to use it. For example, I don't want to use Azure DevOps (Github Actions) or w/e it's called. It's absolute garbage. Abysmal design, abysmal implementation. But, I'm forced into it because the org I work for has an obligation to put their projects in GitHub. And, against my will, my work and my knowledge is used by Microsoft to abuse their users. My only consolation is that I do this as a paid job, and I, personally, will not use Github, and will advise everyone I can to do the same. But this is too little. I want to be a good person, and to do my job in such a way that it's valuable to people who requested it. I feel really bad that, instead, I'm indirectly peddling the pile of garbage made by Microsoft to astronomically enrich the few people standing at the top of the company.
- dgellow 2y ago
  Your rant about being forced to use a software your company decided for has nothing to do with the topic at hand, the person you responded to said that VSCode is Microsoft’s very best software. That’s definitely defensible, right now vscode is the most advanced open source editor that ever existed. It came from nowhere in an insanely crowded space and became the de facto standard on every system because it is so good for so many use cases.
  - crabbone 2y ago
    > most advanced open source editor that ever existed. I feel like you are either paid to write this, or are trying to be funny... By what metric is this editor the "most advanced"? It doesn't hold a candle to Either Vim or Emacs. It doesn't even play in the same league. It's just crude simplistic nothing-going-on-for-it garbage... I'm writing this as someone who has to support a lot of VSCode users, and I do know the program better than an average VSCode user. But I would never switch to using it. There's not a single compelling reason for someone who knows how to use either Emacs or Vim to even consider this possibility. > insanely crowded space There are only two decent code editors: Vim and Emacs. They've been in this "crowded" space for a very long time without any real competition. Anything else is just so much worse it doesn't even merit a passing mention. VSCode is in the same group with MSVS / Eclipse / IDEA / NetBeens etc. editors that simply don't seem to know what it means to be a good code editor. In a sense, it's very similar to how you might want to buy something from Ali Express (or even Amazon more recently). You find yourself looking through dozens of pages of variations of the same low-quality version of the product manufactured cheaply in some impoverished country. And you simply won't find the real thing there, and may get an impression that cheap junk is all there is. This is, essentially, what happens if you use MSVS / Eclipse / IDEA and Co. You just grow to believe that there's only garbage, and there's a tight competition between different flavors of garbage.

derkades 2y ago

> From what I can tell, Microsoft isn't even sabotaging open alternatives I think they are. VSIX extensions are supposed to be some sort of open standard, but some Microsoft extensions like Pylance actively refuse to work if they detect running in something other than Microsoft's build of VS Code.

jeroenhd 2y ago
Microsoft's extensions don't work, but that's Microsoft's choice. Whatever open source alternative for Pylance exists (if any) will work just fine. If they messed with VSCode to sabotage OpenPylance or whatever the situation would be different, but in this case people are just looking a gift horse in the mouth.
- WorldMaker 2y ago
  Pylance is Pyright (open source) plus custom Small Language Models and other proprietary sauce. Pylance isn't sabotaging Pyright, because it is built on top of it. You can find alternative extensions that are "just" Pyright. (They have a fraction of the users because the SLM-based magic of Pylance is a nicer experience if you can "afford" it [based on your principles].) Pyright is maybe sabotaging competitive projects MyPy and Ruff by being "knighted" as a part of Pylance, but that's not generally how open source competition is seen to exist. There also doesn't currently seem to be competition for the proprietary bits of Pylance outside of the LLM space. That's maybe catching up quickly, but Microsoft's more dedicated SLM models might still be leaders in the space, and Microsoft wanting to keep models proprietary while they are competitive shouldn't be a surprise.
  - ghuntley 2y ago
    Encourage you to look at the bigger picture. What happens when there’s an official extension by a 3rd party vendor SDK that defines a dependency on the proprietary language server/extension. It’ll work fine for “Visual Studio Code” but all these OSS forks (inc recent venture capital funding for AI ones) gets wrecked. It turns into a game of having to iterate through the graph and trying to convince official SDKs to change their product direction. Pushing shit up hill…
ryanjshaw 2y ago
How is this different from arguing that Linux is not open source because Oracle won't run on it without a valid license?
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]

SamuelAdams 2y ago

Exactly. Look at the Ashai Linux project. They are doing tremendous work, but getting basic feature parity with a now 3 year old laptop is still ongoing work. Then once feature parity is done, performance problems are next, if they ever get addressed and completed. I love the idea for open source software, but the very best software in todays world is always something you have to pay for.

riiii 2y ago

>"The free software Microsoft is giving away isn't open enough" This is not a quote from the article and isn't what the article is saying. It's effectively suggestig that devs are being duped and MS goals are closing essential parts down.

hiddencost 2y ago

Imagine a hypothetical world in which a nonprofit funded by donations and grants from nonprofits and governments funded your code editor. That was eclipse. There are lots of great examples of well funded open source software projects. Companies have a history of killing them off, which hurts everyone.

iLemming 2y ago

So my problem with MSFT's big plan is that I simply don't know it. I do know the price I'm paying for using Emacs and Vim. Even though (in theory) they are completely free, in reality there's a price there. Vim and Emacs require time, patience, and dedication, just like any other tools. I know who gains from my choice - myself, the community, and the industry. I knew exactly how JetBrains profited from my choice of using IntelliJ in the past - I paid for the license and renewed it every year. But what's MSFT's scheme here? They're giving me this beautiful, nice tool completely for "free"? What price will I have to pay for that choice in the future? I'm sorry, but I think every dev should remain at least a bit skeptical, do you truly believe that Microsoft, a colossal corporation with a market capitalization comparable to the GDP of Germany, spends an enormous amount of resources to build "a free" code editor, because... I dunno, they love you or something?

AshAnnouncer 2y ago
> But what's MSFT's scheme here? They realized by pushing typescript they can drive companies away from java, then when those companies will realize typescript sucks they'll be redirected to c#
- neonsunset 2y ago
  It would be funny if it worked that way but luckily or unluckily it doesn't.
CrimsonCape 2y ago
We are in uncharted territory. This major corporation has a "big plan" that relies on making their product offerings "open source" while simultaneously surrounding it with a minefield such that the "open source" aspect is camouflage/subterfuge. "Subterfuge Source" has a nice ring to it, and abbreviated "SS" really drives the point home as well.

crabbone 2y ago

> Microsoft's very best software This has to be a joke, right? Microsoft's software is absolute nightmare pile of trash. > People are taking software given to them free of charge for granted. Whooosh: this is the point made by the author of the article zooming over your head. The point is that closed-source software that pretends to be open-source will affect even those who don't need or want to use it. For example, I don't want to use Azure DevOps (Github Actions) or w/e it's called. It's absolute garbage. Abysmal design, abysmal implementation. But, I'm forced into it because the org I work for has an obligation to put their projects in GitHub. And, against my will, my work and my knowledge is used by Microsoft to abuse their users. My only consolation is that I do this as a paid job, and I, personally, will not use Github, and will advise everyone I can to do the same. But this is too little. I want to be a good person, and to do my job in such a way that it's valuable to people who requested it. I feel really bad that, instead, I'm indirectly peddling the pile of garbage made by Microsoft to astronomically enrich the few people standing at the top of the company.

dgellow 2y ago
Your rant about being forced to use a software your company decided for has nothing to do with the topic at hand, the person you responded to said that VSCode is Microsoft’s very best software. That’s definitely defensible, right now vscode is the most advanced open source editor that ever existed. It came from nowhere in an insanely crowded space and became the de facto standard on every system because it is so good for so many use cases.
- crabbone 2y ago
  > most advanced open source editor that ever existed. I feel like you are either paid to write this, or are trying to be funny... By what metric is this editor the "most advanced"? It doesn't hold a candle to Either Vim or Emacs. It doesn't even play in the same league. It's just crude simplistic nothing-going-on-for-it garbage... I'm writing this as someone who has to support a lot of VSCode users, and I do know the program better than an average VSCode user. But I would never switch to using it. There's not a single compelling reason for someone who knows how to use either Emacs or Vim to even consider this possibility. > insanely crowded space There are only two decent code editors: Vim and Emacs. They've been in this "crowded" space for a very long time without any real competition. Anything else is just so much worse it doesn't even merit a passing mention. VSCode is in the same group with MSVS / Eclipse / IDEA / NetBeens etc. editors that simply don't seem to know what it means to be a good code editor. In a sense, it's very similar to how you might want to buy something from Ali Express (or even Amazon more recently). You find yourself looking through dozens of pages of variations of the same low-quality version of the product manufactured cheaply in some impoverished country. And you simply won't find the real thing there, and may get an impression that cheap junk is all there is. This is, essentially, what happens if you use MSVS / Eclipse / IDEA and Co. You just grow to believe that there's only garbage, and there's a tight competition between different flavors of garbage.