4 ms·
The Cursor founders (technically the company is called Anysphere, Inc) are all young MIT grads. What they needed is a 40-year-old with a degree from Fitchburg S
by AIPedant 1y ago
The Cursor founders (technically the company is called Anysphere, Inc) are all young MIT grads. What they needed is a 40-year-old with a degree from Fitchburg State who could say "Woah, don't do that! It's not worth the long-term risk!"
- londons_explore 1y agoIt is worth the long term risk. Either you don't get caught and can move faster, or you get caught and the penalty is usually small and a long way down the line, by which time your company will have either folded or grown enough to pay without difficulty.
- electroly 1y agoThat's the play when your adversary is regulation--the government moves slowly, court cases move even slower, and you can grease the wheels politically. That is not the scenario here. Cursor is being hunted by an extremely motivated corporate competitor. Cursor has been leeching the gorilla's blood and the gorilla finally noticed. Microsoft doesn't (necessarily) need the law here. They have it if they need it, but they can kill Cursor without needing to sue them. The disastrous outcome isn't a penalty--it's a critical mass of users switching to Copilot because they can't use their Microsoft extensions in Cursor any more. Cutting off the extensions on the same day that their Cursor clone went live was effectively a declaration of war from Microsoft.
- moi2388 1y agoWhat cursor clone?
- extr 1y agoIt's possible but I think this is a bit of a non-issue for cursor. Microsoft extensions are pretty good but are not irreplacable, and in the meantime cursor has grown astronomically fast and has grabbed a ton of "AI Coding" mindshare. I think the gamble has already paid off for them: if they have to play nice with licensing and develop their own solutions to replace MS proprietary extensions, they now have the scale to do that. GH Copilot was first in the game but now has the reputation of the poor man's cursor.
- pjmlp 1y agoI don't know anyone that even knows Cursor exists, outside HN readership bubble.
- aleph_minus_one 1y ago> The disastrous outcome isn't a penalty--it's a critical mass of users switching to Copilot because they can't use their Microsoft extensions in Cursor any more. What will happen in this situation depends a lot on the "reputation" of Microsoft vs Anysphere (Cursor) and their "marketing": If Anysphere's "marketing" wins, they mass of users will be very disgusted by Microsoft's moves that they will avoid it like the plague to touch basically any avoidable product of Microsoft (including in particular Github Copilot) again.
- dmix 1y agoThis would only be a major issue if most development tooling was controlled by Microsoft. There's a huge market for Cursor even without microsoft's C/C++ intellisense plugins and the open source community will adapt quickly if it's gone. The risks around proxying to the marketplace are real but that doesnt seem to be an issue yet. It also continues lock-in to VSCode which benefits Microsoft so they might not care.
- jonstewart 1y agoOr, hear me out, Microsoft decides you’d make excellent additions its House of Faces For IDE/Compiler Competitors and your face is on the wall before you know what happened.
- sterlind 1y agoexactly! laws are for old geezers who went to State, not young superstars with fancy degrees. MIT negotiated diplomatic immunity for its graduates, after all. that's why Sam Bankman-Fried got acquitted when FTX went under.
- thenipper 1y agoThe amount of Boston in this comment is amazing. And 100% true
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- pier25 1y agoExactly. What were they expecting would happen? They are breaking the tos while competing with Microsoft.
- redox99 1y agoGrow fast, raise a few billions, deal with the lawsuit in a few years.