
The best Parts of Visual Studio Code are proprietary - ingve
https://underjord.io/the-best-parts-of-visual-studio-code-are-proprietary.html
======
sudhirj
Yes and no. The complaint is that some widely used extensions are proprietary.
If these extensions require MS servers, then they have every reason to be.
Even if they don't, there's nothing wrong with a company holding back some
stuff they consider strategic, they're not obligated to release them.

If we're debating the OSS credentials of VSCode, it'll need to be based on the
code already released (which makes it a pretty great OSS editor) and the
current team of people the company has devoted to maintaining that OSS section
of the product (also pretty great).

Arguing that there are some extensions that are closed source and that's bad
is a bit weird, especially when we can just make an open sourced extension
that does the same thing.

~~~
CiTyBear
I don't think it says "Software not open-source is bad". But more something
like "It is marketed as open source but it is not".

Developers should be aware that VSCode is not as open source as it claims it
is. In my circles, developers could swear VSCode is fully open source without
even knowing VSCodium.

If people were more aware about this, they might think twice before using
VSCode for everything and getting lock-in (just like the article says)

~~~
skohan
Yes this is exactly the risk: developers become dependent on the VSCode
extension ecosystem, while thinking they are safely using only FOSS tools.

This is the kind of double-speak which lets MS have the best of both worlds.
From a marketing/developer relations perspective, developers think they are
using open-source tools. But in actuality, developers are investing in
workflows where MS is a critical link in the chain.

~~~
thisiswater
As the author puts it: "It makes me less certain that this isn't the Extend in
Embrace, Extend, Extinguish."

~~~
pjmlp
Google has largely outpaced Microsoft on what concerns Extinguish.

~~~
easton
Can you give some examples? I haven’t seen Google close source something
lately, except for Go’s package hosting server (which makes me inclined to
believe you, I just haven’t heard of other instances).

~~~
lenkite
All the Google apps that used to be open once-upon-a-time in Android and whose
evolved versions are all closed source now.

------
fadzlan
The extension by design is made to be optional to use and are not integral (I
would argue) to the vanilla experience of VS Code.

That also means that if other people wants to create their own proprietary
extensions they can do so. The basic experience of the plain VS Code does not
change.

Now one can say indeed that the Remote and also LiveShare is the best
extension there of, and since the extension author decides not to share the
code, then it stays proprietary. It's just that this time the author is
Microsoft itself.

But because the extension itself is not integral to the VS Code itself and
merely an extension, there is no stopping anyone to create open source version
of the same experience.

However, where I have issues with is that, if you were to base you own editor
with VS Codium (the open source, without the telemetry), you still can't use
the service that is the extension marketplace for VS Code. Yes, even if it
still works, and even if the extension itself is open source. Hence, just
because VS Code has a lot of extensions that is open source, does not mean it
is readily reusable, because the extension service is off limits.

Of course, one can also publish the same extension in another public directory
if they want, but currently there is no such directory exist. And it has to be
republished to the new public extension directory.

So yes, VS Code is open source, but the access to the extensions is not
currently.

~~~
wlesieutre
code-server has most extensions available. They do it by scraping GitHub for
extensions and building them.

[https://github.com/cdr/code-
server/blob/3da6c561b83d2a4c57f3...](https://github.com/cdr/code-
server/blob/3da6c561b83d2a4c57f3c471ba93b82845a22acc/doc/FAQ.md#differences-
compared-to-vs-code)

The Microsoft extensions are notably missing, but they have a lot of other
ones. There's an issue template for requesting another one if you find
something missing.

Not sure if their second extension store is available for use by software
other than code-server, but it's not an impossible problem.

~~~
nhooyr
code-server also lets you customize the marketplace URL at runtime.

[https://github.com/cdr/code-
server/blob/master/doc/FAQ.md#ho...](https://github.com/cdr/code-
server/blob/master/doc/FAQ.md#how-do-i-configure-the-marketplace-url)

    
    
      SERVICE_URL=https://open-vsx.org/vscode/gallery
      ITEM_URL=https://open-vsx.org/vscode/item
    

So you can use open-vsx, ours or Microsoft's (with the caveat that you would
violate their license).

See this thread:
[https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/issues/31168#issue-24453...](https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/issues/31168#issue-244533026)

------
skohan
I can be counted as one of the skeptics of MS's open-source efforts. It just
seems to me that MS's history and recent investment in open-source puts us in
a quantum state between two possibilities:

1\. MS has changed their ways, and has become an altruist organization which
just wants to give developers things of value for free so they might hopefully
choose Azure when they decide what cloud provider to run on.

2\. MS is embedding themselves in the open-source community in such a way that
it's almost unavoidable to make use of their proprietary tools without even
realizing it, and they will use that to their advantage against competitors
and developers.

It's just hard for me to think that the second possibility won't become
increasingly true to the extent that MS gains the leverage to get away with
it.

As a side-note, I think MS's marketing for VSCode has been very effective. As
an editor, I don't see an advantage over 𝚖̶𝚘̶𝚛̶𝚎̶ ̶𝚘̶𝚙̶𝚎̶𝚗̶ less corporate
alternatives like SublimeText, and I actually don't like the "install this
plugin" spam in the bottom right corner.

~~~
sjellis
I would say that it can be both. Large organizations like Microsoft have so
many different people and teams that there isn't necessarily a group-think. On
the contrary, different teams will have different priorities, and keeping
people aligned is a really hard job.

The thing that bothers me about Visual Studio Code is that does conform to the
general Microsoft rule of enabling telemetry by default. IMO, this is not good
practice, and in some cases it seems to have been encouraged or mandated at a
senior level. We should not have aggressive data collection in the world's
standard desktop OS, or compilers baking vendor instrumentation into C++
binaries by default.

~~~
d4rti
I used to be quite hardline on this matter myself, but I found the julialang
[1] discussion on this topic quite a persuasive argument in favour of default
telemetry.

I think it's a difficult ethical question, because there are balancing
concerns and interests, and most behaviour doesn't easily fall into the
obviously wrong or obviously right categories.

[1] [https://discourse.julialang.org/t/pkg-jl-telemetry-should-
be...](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/pkg-jl-telemetry-should-be-opt-
in/42209/2)

~~~
anxmla
There is a difference between, say, Debian popcon (which is opt in during
install) and the 50 MSFT tracking options that are enabled despite having
ticked the "no" box during install.

One of which is a keylogger! Windows 10 is pure evil.

~~~
easton
Do you have a link for the key logger?

~~~
lozenge
The full list is here [https://docs.microsoft.com/en-
gb/windows/privacy/required-wi...](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-
gb/windows/privacy/required-windows-diagnostic-data-events-and-fields-2004)

~~~
GordonS
It's a big page, so I might be missing something - could you point me towards
the part where is says it logs keystrokes?

~~~
naikrovek
It doesn't. It creates statistics on how you type and what words you use in
order to predict your input in order to help you in the future by predicting
words you'll use before you type them.

It also doesn't do this for password/passphrase fields.

You can also turn it off, and you're prompted to do so upon OS installation,
and the option is always there in the settings application, and you can even
tell Microsoft to delete any telemetry it has for you, if you want, and
they'll delete it.

Those are the facts. But, it's common to ignore those and just shout
"keylogger" in online forums. It is also, somehow, a sign of weakness if you
look for updated or changed information which may change your opinions,
because no one ever seems to do this. Like, ever.

------
nudpiedo
I do not understand people with allergy to non OSS.

Compare that to any google service which barely releases the clients as open
source, and the clients usually are so complex that may need quite long time
to get any professional developer productive in such complex code bases. Also
being tied to a controlled protocol, set of libraries, cloud infrastructure
which does actually keep your data is in fact the actual evil that Free
Software wanted to save us.

At the end it is just corporations fighting for their users and giving free
candy (OSS Clients) so they get some traction. I do not expect that to change
and I do not thing companies should either keep their servers OSS just for the
sake of keeping OSS folks happy.

I am more concerned about law compliance and companies respecting my rights,
and providing good user support when necessary. Also the next freedom battle
should be to accept any system to plug in to any other "cloud" provider
service (as much as we do with electricity, phone, etc) and in this regard
Microsoft is way ahead of Google and Apple yet still far from an utopian free
interexchangeable stack.

~~~
d4rti
Your comment neatly alludes to the difference between the Open Source
philosophies and the Free Software philosophy, and the biggest point of
difference is "freedom for whom?" wherein OSS is about freedom for developers
and FSF is about freedom for users.

Most users don't actually fall in either camp, and largely care about free as
in beer (gratis), or possibly free as in doesn't require complex purchasing
processes that require signoff or approvals.

~~~
neutronicus
Well, FSF is about freedom for users with the technical expertise to modify
the software and understand its source code.

~~~
simion314
>Well, FSF is about freedom for users with the technical expertise to modify
the software and understand its source code.

FALSE, example some guy pays me to modify a GPL script/program and add some
integration for his business. If I am a jerk I don't give him the source code
only an obfuscated binary. This guy is not an expert but if I would have
respected the license and give him the source code then he can in future hire
a new developer to update the application when a new change is needed.

Conclusion is that I do not need to be a developer to benefit from free
software I can always find somebody that I can pay to fix or add something I
need.

~~~
wolco
Legally he could sue when the next developer asks for it.

------
lorenzfx
I don't think this is a fair assessment.

This post is about two plugins (`LiveShare` and `Remote`), both by Microsoft,
not being open source. None of these plugins are even mentioned on Microsoft's
Visual Studio Code homepage [0]. At least LiveShare is marketed as a separate
tool for which a Visual Studio Code plugin exists (as well as a Visual Studio
plugin).

[0] [https://code.visualstudio.com/](https://code.visualstudio.com/) [1]
[https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/de/services/live-
share/](https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/de/services/live-share/)

~~~
lozenge
Microsoft's Python support just went closed source(pylance vs python language
server) the closed sourceness is creeping in on multiple sides. IntelliCode is
another closed source aspect.

~~~
acdha
More precisely, the Python extension is open source but the Pylance language
server is not:

[https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode-
python](https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode-python)
[https://github.com/microsoft/pylance-
release](https://github.com/microsoft/pylance-release)

~~~
WorldMaker
Pylance is built upon the Pyright language server which is open source:
[https://github.com/microsoft/pyright](https://github.com/microsoft/pyright)

I'm curious what research/IP has lead to this being a source turducken of
open-closed-open, but it's not entirely closed.

~~~
acdha
Has anyone said definitively that it wouldn't be open-source in the future? I
know sometimes this is due to things like joint or contract development where
the lawyers need to hash out the rights first.

~~~
WorldMaker
No plans according to a comment in July [1].

Curiosity leading me to try to answer my own question with an educated guess:
Pylance does appear to use the ONNX runtime, so it seems probable that it
could be using ML models for type information to feed to Pyright developed by
or in concert with IntelliCode efforts and that research effort of IntelliCode
does fit what Microsoft is currently keeping proprietary.

[1] [https://github.com/microsoft/pylance-
release/issues/4#issuec...](https://github.com/microsoft/pylance-
release/issues/4#issuecomment-652555104)

~~~
acdha
Interesting, thanks for the link - that definitely sounds like they’re trying
something like using the free version as training for a paid product.

------
sjellis
I really like VS Code, but am definitely wary of the way that it intermingles
open source, proprietary code and remote services. For that reason, I use the
VSCodium build most of the time.

You definitely need to take responsibility and read the documentation for each
extension that you decide to install. You may be surprised.

I would also disagree with the article and recommend that you disable
telemetry, unless you specifically decide that you want that copy of VS Code
and those extensions to send data. I understand the value of telemetry data,
but I think that turning it on by default is unethical: software should not be
written to automatically transmit data to remote systems without explicit user
consent.

~~~
mschuster91
> but I think that turning it on by default is unethical

Not to mention illegal in the EU without explicit informed consent. Accept-by-
default etc have been ruled illegal by courts many times.

~~~
blackoil
Does telemetry include any GDPR data?

~~~
mschuster91
Of course it does, the IP address alone is viewed as PII.

~~~
esperent
What makes you think they log IP addresses?

~~~
mschuster91
Under GDPR _any_ kind of data processing falls under the protection umbrella.
And that includes the data processing that automatically happens during the
creation of a TCP/IP connection - where the recipient party automatically
gains knowledge of the IP address of the other side.

For a web site _itself_ this is generally fine as it is a technical necessity
and intended by the user... however stuff that is _not_ necessary to fulfill
the user intention such as any kind of tracking or telemetry is opt-in only.

And yes this was and is the explicit intention why the GDPR was passed in the
first place: get rid of involuntary tracking, telemetry and other data thefts.

~~~
esperent
> Under GDPR any kind of data processing falls under the protection umbrella.

If processing IPs always required consent, every website, app, and operating
system would have to come with a cookie banner. Instead, processing IPs falls
under the "required to make things work" banner. I'm sure VSCode processes
your IP address for many things such as installing extensions and updates and
nobody is arguing they need consent for those.

This particular case is complicated since it's telemetry, however, they are
gathering non-identifying data.

I suspect this is currently a grey area of the GDPR which would take a lot of
money and lawyer time to work out. In the meantime, MS (and many others) are
taking the point of view that this non-identifying data gathering is important
for the work of making the software better and therefore doesn't require
consent. Personally, that seems reasonable. None of my actual identifying data
is being collected, so this matches the spirit of the law at least, if not the
letter.

~~~
mschuster91
> If processing IPs always required consent, every website, app, and operating
> system would have to come with a cookie banner.

Or, you know, they could just _not do data collection_ or limit to reasonable
amounts? The way stuff used to be before ubiquitous broadband connections? As
the GDPR intended?

> Instead, processing IPs falls under the "required to make things work"
> banner. I'm sure VSCode processes your IP address for many things such as
> installing extensions and updates and nobody is arguing they need consent
> for those.

Because installing updates is something the user wants and needs (and is
recommended by international IT security standard). But telemetry is _not_
something the user wants or needs and the software works fine without the
data, therefore it should be opt-in only.

The problem: Microsoft formally has the Ireland subsidiary listed for data
processing (as many US tech companies do), and the Irish DPO is _notorious_
for being slow and lax. It will take years for courts to decide on that
matter.

~~~
esperent
Well, I honestly don't care enough about non-identifying data being collected
to continue this discussion. However, if you really feel that this is illegal
under the GDPR, rather than wait for lawyers to get involved (which might
never happen), why not open an issue on the VSCode repo and discuss it there?

Even if they dismiss it, it might help matters for lawyers at a later date -
as in, they can point to the issue that was opened and say, you cannot deny
being aware of this issue because you dismissed people's concerns previously.

------
Deukhoofd
The best parts of Code are the editor functions. If I had to name the good
parts of Code I wouldn't even think about LiveShare, it's mostly a gimmick
I've looked at once or twice.

As for the marketplace, most extensions link to their github repositories,
from where you can download and install the extensions. The marketplace itself
is mostly a convenience thing.

~~~
ShamelessC
I had never even heard of LiveShare until today.

~~~
naikrovek
LiveShare is pretty great.

------
AshamedCaptain
And even the C++ intellicode/parser extension is proprietary.

But no, last time this was mentioned, it was downvoted to oblivion. "But, you
see, they put the intellicode C++ extension in Github, so it must be
opensource!"

Wrong. They are just using Github to distribute binaries. If you download the
vsix file from either github or the vscode extension repos, you will find a
10MB binary called cpptools that was not there in the source tarball. The
extension does nothing without it.

~~~
acqq
Your claim is supported by the "Offline installation" section of:

[https://github.com/microsoft/vscode-
cpptools](https://github.com/microsoft/vscode-cpptools)

"The extension has _platform-specific binary dependencies_ , therefore
installation via the Marketplace requires an Internet connection in order to
download additional dependencies. If you are working on a computer that does
not have access to the Internet or is behind a strict firewall, you may need
to use our platform-specific packages and install them by running VS Code's
"Install from VSIX..." command. These "offline' packages are available at:
[https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode-
cpptools/releases."](https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode-cpptools/releases.")

~~~
AshamedCaptain
No, not at all . Platform specific does not mean proprietary. In fact, the
same vsix also contains a lldb and a mono binary ( which are platform
dependent) but these are opensource and in fact build scripts are provided.

It is the hidden cpptools binary which has no source that is the problem. And
that one is not that well announced. So lot of people think the extension is
opensource when the important bits are not.

~~~
acqq
> It is the hidden cpptools binary which has no source that is the problem.

Anybody knows what that binary does?

~~~
AshamedCaptain
It _is_ (I dare say) the important part of the extension, as it contains the
language server and then more. E.g. all C++ parsing is done on it.

~~~
acqq
> all C++ parsing is done on it.

Unless somebody needs to change how the C++ sources are processed, doesn't its
mere presence allow the extension to function? I.e. if you modify the source
of the extension, wouldn't that modified extension still function with the
unchanged binary?

I fail to see, from the perspective of some user of VS Code: what are the
issues of not having the sources for the binary that does C++ parsing?

It seems to me comparable to not having a source of Google, but being able to
make as many queries as you want (Google wouldn't even allow you that, by
default).

~~~
AshamedCaptain
This looks flamebait since it seems you are literally asking "what are the
benefits of opensource" ?. For starters, you can no longer run the extension
on platforms that MS does not care for, e.g. Haiku or even ARM or RISCV on
Linux. Plus the only thing I have ever modified in a C++ IDE is, actually, the
C++ autocomplete component, so I do have a reason to want to modify this
extension.

> It seems to me comparable to not having a source of Google, but being able
> to make as many queries as you want

This analogy does not work at all. This is a local component and there are no
online services whatsoever involved.

~~~
acqq
> I do have a reason to want to modify this extension.

And it is...? It's a completely honest question, I really like to know what
you'd want to achieve and modify but is hidden from you for being in that
binary. I'm not interested in the "benefits of open source" but in the
specific use cases.

I surely agree that you are limited to the platforms MS is building that
binary for, but if you are already using the platform for which they provide
the binary, what would you like to change but you can't since it is in the
binary and not in the rest of the extension for which there is existing
source?

I'm asking as somebody whose job was for many years actually implementing
these kinds of software (parsers, compilers, real time parsers for help during
editing, etc.). I am really interested in specific use cases, to know if
working on the development of some alternative could be justified.

~~~
AshamedCaptain
Back in 2016, my team started using the structured binding declaration (C++1z,
yes) in our codebase, aka "auto [a, b] = ...".

At the point I was using Qt Creator which had two C++ parsers: a custom one
which was very fast but not keeping up with the times and (optionally) a
clang-based one. I was using the "custom" parser because it would take 2
minutes to scan a small 10MLOC codebase where the clang one would take almost
a day (and still takes multiple hours, and so does the Eclipse CDT parser and
others).

That small custom parser would choke on structured binding declarations, and
it would recover in the most terrible way possible as it would skip entire
functions. Thereby I was starting to lose autocomplete on huge chunks of the
codebase.

Now, I have quite a bit of experience on parsers, so it was trivial for me
(one weekend) to change the QtCreator one to handle these declarations like (a
series of) auto declarations (which it did not do that well, but it was
workable). I was able to get another 2 years out of QtCreator with that fix.
By then I didn't care.

But this is just my particular example.

I really don't understand why usecases for an opensource IDE would be
surprising, specially since this is _developers_ we are talking about, the
most likely group of people to feel comfortable editing the IDE to their
liking.

------
AJRF
True that the marketplace has some weird rules (I think there is an online
instance of VSCode, that scrapes Github for plugins that have permissive
licenses to show them in the Marketplace tab - essentially a forked
marketplace) - but the best bits of VSCode _are_ open.

Remote plugin, terminal, marketplace are less valuable in an engineering sense
than the actual editor itself.

Monaco, Monarch & LSP are projects that are directly or tangentially related
to the VSCode project are they are MIT licensed and have astounding
capability. Have a look at the editor API for Monaco - its extremely well
engineered.

I for one am extremely thankful that these projects are open source because
those are they genuinely impressive bits of engineering from VSCode.

------
ciroduran
This sounds like a very similar argument for other IDEs, such as Eclipse. You
have a free IDE, with open source code, and a giant plugin ecosystem, but the
plugins themselves aren't free nor open source. What's new under the sun?

------
alkonaut
So don’t use liveshare? It’s still a compelling (Open source) editor without
liveshare.

I don’t think LiveShare is a top-10 feature of vscode. It’s one of the better
_unique_ features but that’s something else.

~~~
chriswwweb
I thought the same, the article title is (deliberately) misleading by using
the word "parts" instead of being clear and stating that some extensions that
you can get from the store might not be opensource ... I had never heard of
LiveShare before and have no need for it, I have lots of extensions installed
and don't think any of them is proprietary

------
worble
>Such as the VS Codium project which provides VS Code binaries without the
proprietary parts. But also, as a consequence of this, without the Marketplace
of extensions.

It's worth noting you can easily switch vscodium back to using the official
extension marketplace by changing the product.json file as noted here:
[https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium/blob/master/DOCS.md#ext...](https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium/blob/master/DOCS.md#extensions-
marketplace)

They note the legality of this is dubious. I'm no lawyer so I can't say I
understand the intricacies of this, but as far as I can tell, it's merely
against the TOS of the marketplace. At worst, I imagine Microsoft would just
lock the marketplace down and prevent vscodium accessing it in the future, if
they see it as a big enough problem.

~~~
naikrovek
Vscodium isn't different from vscode. It IS vscode. Vscodium is merely some
scripts to download the vscode source, and compile it while removing Microsoft
branding.

------
coldtea
> _It makes me uneasy to accept VS Code as an "open" project in any wider
> meaning of the word when compelling features are legally locked to only work
> inside the family of Visual Studio products._

Yeah, so? I'll still use it. And those "compelling features" were only added
in the last year or so. VSCode became immensily popular sereval years before
they landed.

Plus, if somebody likes, they can create the same functionality as open source
extensions upon the open source VSC core.

Microsoft also has to create something to differentiate themselves, right? Or
should it all be just free foss stuff?

------
luma
This is quite a reach. VSCode is open source. Some popular extensions are not.
Neither extension used as examples here are ones that I use, so they certainly
aren’t critical to the product functionality.

The argument here feels akin to saying Linux is open source, but some
applications available for Linux aren’t, so Linux is thus somehow not actually
open source.

------
zimbatm
I know that the author wants to use VS Code. But for those reading here and
live in the terminal, tmate[1] is truly incredible. Install and type `tmate`,
and you have a tmux session that people can SSH into. I have used it countless
times and is a great complement to a video sessions. Much better than
pixelated fonts in a screen share.

[1]: [https://github.com/tmate-io/tmate](https://github.com/tmate-io/tmate)

~~~
chillee
I don't think tmate allows you to edit text separately, right? It simply
allows you to both control the screen.

VSCode Live Share allows users to independently move. So, if you're pair
programming and want to check something, you don't need to awkwardly ask to
switch files.

------
jake_morrison
The tech giants leverage the profits they get from dominating one area to
compete in another. You can't build a hyperscale cloud without being able to
spend billions. Amazon subsidizes AWS using their e-commerce business, Google
with advertising, Microsoft with Windows/Office/etc.

Microsoft has a long history of giving things away for free in order to
hamstring their competitors. Netscape is the prime example. MS is very good at
developer tools. How can any commercial editor compete with the amount of
resources they are putting into making VS Code and giving it away for free?

MS fundamentally needs their remote editing tools to support developing for
Linux-based containers on Windows. Then they leverage it to debug containers
running in the cloud from VS Code. But then they keep competitors from using
the server side extensions. We need an open source server for this.

Anti-trust needs to look at more than the monetary cost to consumers. It
should consider the long term health of the ecosystem.

~~~
nova22033
_Amazon subsidizes AWS using their e-commerce business,_

Pretty sure AWS is more profitable and doesn't need any subsidy.

------
fergie
If, as the author says, live collaboration is important, then its probably
much better to rely on GNU screen or similar. It follows therefore that you
should then be using an editor that can run inside of a terminal such as Vi or
Emacs.

Also, the revelation that Visual Studio Code is not in fact as open source-y
as it could be should come as a surprise to nobody

~~~
recrof
Is android not considered opensource enough because it uses google play
services?

~~~
ShamelessC
I mean, yeah? That's a common attack against Google and the reason ungoogled
forks of Android exist.

------
sorennielsen
That's one reason that I have started paying attention to the Theia project. I
like to keep things open.

Link: [https://theia-ide.org/](https://theia-ide.org/)

------
mothsonasloth
On the other hand you have IntelliJ which is closed source, and doesn't have
any live share feature. Despite it being a highly voted feature on their
feature/bug tracking site

[https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/IDEABKL-708](https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/IDEABKL-708)

~~~
GordonS
> Despite it being a highly voted feature

To be fair, this is a _really_ complex feature to add, so it would be a
serious commitment from JetBrains to build it.

~~~
moron4hire
It runs in a browser shell. It's got WebRTC ready to go. The hardest part of
WebRTC is dealing with whatever bullshit Mozilla and Apple are doing this
week, so given that browser shell is Chrome, and you can hardly walk through a
computer science journal without tripping over a consensus algorithm paper
these days, it's really not that complex.

~~~
nhooyr
IntelliJ does not run in a browser shell.

~~~
moron4hire
Sorry, I still had VSCode on the brain

------
yurlungur
I can see how remote can be a vital plugin these days for some...although I
can't say it makes vscode what it is. there are workarounds and it's not like
remote doesn't have its own problems.

LiveShare though doesn't convince me because there are existing ways of code
sharing and collaboration that doesn't involve google doc style live sharing
at all. In fact that pattern sounds a bit weird to me. I guess it enables pair
programming if you really need it but it's completely useless to me. I use
git+reviewboard to share my code and they work just fine.

That said, I do think the author's larger point stand. Microsoft's good will
to be open source extends only to where it wishes and in this case it's a
rather limited range. I believe in the spirit of sharing code and I think
sharing more is better than sharing less, which is better than not sharing at
all.

------
zxter
This feels like free to play but pay to win kind of games, or cheap base game
to release to poison, countless expensive DLCs. But instead of money, it is
freedom.

Just because of this I prefer open source projects from smaller developers
that are built with labor of love, instead of from big corporate businesses
that will eventually try to use you for any kind of profit.

Since topic is similar, I would like to recommend onivim 2 [0] for who prefer
vi bindings. It is almost out of alpha and in pretty usable stage. Currently
they are integrating open-vsx. Project is open source with dual license and it
is currently very cheap for who wants to support, or free to build from source
to try.

[0] [https://www.onivim.io/](https://www.onivim.io/)

~~~
x3c
It's the same strategy that Google follows for Android. The secret juice of
the Android app ecosystem is in the Google Play services... And that's
entirely proprietary. So even though the OS is open source, it's impossible to
truly build an alternative ecosystem. I agree with the author that the
marketing rings falsey.

------
kartayyar
I am grateful that VS code is free and if they want to monetize this by having
some kind of paid upsell to another product, then all power to them.

They made a good product and if this is a way to fund improvements, I say it's
a good thing.

------
physicles
Is VS Code lean anymore? I switched to it long ago when Atom got too slow, but
I’m using VS under Ubuntu for Go development on a brand new X1 Carbon and it’s
laggy as hell — probably 200ms average between keypress and response, and
sometimes up to a second between clicking to open a file and getting focus in
the window.

I mean I love the extensions and everything but I’m probably gonna use this as
motivation to learn vim.

------
neurobashing
I was at Pycon - even at the MS booth! - when the Remote stuff was announced.
There was a lot of pushback on why it wasn't open. At the time the story was,
opening it didn't provide much benefit at the start, but was possible in the
future; I recall the all-over-the-place nature of the code was stated as one
of the "there's no benefit" (eg they don't want 100 pull requests to fix
trivial things or formatting or issues they already know about).

They may never open it. Open source isn't magic pixie dust you sprinkle on
software to make it better, but it does make for a weird experience to see
them open some things and not others.

------
1337shadow
> If you have good suggestions for strong collaborative development tools that
> are open source, please let me know

What about screen + vim|emacs ? That's how pair programing have been going for
ages right ?

------
platinumjesus93
From a license specific stand point, what is exactly preventing a company or
an individual to create an equivalent or even better Remote and LiveShare
feature on another code editor?

------
skyfaller
What open source alternatives are there to LiveShare? I've become rather
reliant on LiveShare, I had never checked whether each extension I was using
was open source.

Teletype for Atom appears to be under an MIT license, and it seemed to work
fine for me before I switched to VS Code (after M$ acquired Github and I
figured Atom was doomed).
[https://github.com/atom/teletype](https://github.com/atom/teletype)

------
gitowiec
I don't think it is a problem (which I understood that for author is). It
seems that VS Code is a platform to provide content. Plugins are this content
and some are open source and others are closed source. Another thing is that I
prefer Jetbrains IDEs. They have real power of refaktoring and sincerely who
writes imports nowadays (talking about Typescript)?

------
acd
I think its great that Microsoft has made a great open source code editor/ide!
If one wants a full open source eco system there is always
Eclipse/Atom/Emacs/Vim. The paid Vscode alternative is IntelliJ but that is
crippled with extensions in the community edition so you have to buy the
commercial IntelliJ edition to get language extension.

------
esalman
Lately I have become fully dependent on the remote development extension for
my research, and this makes me very uneasy. I do not want to be restricted to
using proprietary tools in case they change something down the line that is
not to my liking. It was a lot of trouble moving on from Matlab to Python
already...

------
the_gipsy
Just use vim.

------
brainless
Would anyone think this is any different from open core offerings from many
other companies?

------
moron4hire
Hell of a lot of people in this thread insisting that a glorified chatroom
shuffled off into the extension gallery is "critical, core functionality".

I guess they must have been former Emacs users.

------
platinumjesus93
I might have missed a key paragraph, but what is preventing anyone or any
company to develop a Remote equivalent for vim or any other editor? If not
already done.

~~~
diffeomorphism
That it is proprietary?

> I read a piece of license that said that LiveShare could only be used with
> the Visual Studio family of products

------
rubber_duck
> It also frustrates me that this prevents someone from building a compatible
> plugin for VIM or any other editor. This would be much more powerful if it
> could be in all the IntelliJs as well.

VS Code implementation could be used to implement VIM because VIM can use
language server infrastructure etc. IntelliJ would be a game changer for me
but Microsoft OSS-ing their implementation would have 0 impact on this -
IntelliJ uses their own language analysis infrastructure, FS, etc. and they
shown no interest in using language server protocol.

------
haolez
It's time for a rebirth of Atom, then! Except it's "owned" by Microsoft as
well.

Oh, well... let's revive LightTable, then :)

------
aliswe
The .net core debugger is also similarly proprietary. Why is that you think?
Serious question.

------
ilaksh
I think TextAdept is underrated, and it's very easy to extend with Lua.

------
anaisbetts
I mean, if you don't like that then you probably shouldn't be using Google
Chrome because it has similarly proprietary bits (geolocation, translation are
a few examples, but there are afaik ~30-50). Firefox most likely does as well.

~~~
diffeomorphism
If you don't know, you shouldn't throw accusations.

Also at least for firefox and chromium (but not chrome) you can look at the
source.

~~~
anaisbetts
I absolutely Do Know

------
znpy
"Microsoft <3 Open Source" /s

------
pjmlp
Just like many other products, developers have bills to pay.

~~~
Dylan16807
Huh? The developers at microsoft get paid no matter how the company licenses
things.

~~~
toadi
Huh, where is the companies money coming from ?

~~~
Dylan16807
Selling windows and office, generally. The licensing of these extensions is
mostly irrelevant to their plan and the reason they spend money on this
development.

~~~
pjmlp
These extensions are gateways into selling Microsoft infrastructure services.

------
m0zg
And this is why, after flirting with VSCode I'm back to
vim+YouCompleteMe+ctrlp. Does everything I need, 100% FOSS, works anywhere,
and doesn't need a GUI.

------
globular-toast
Of course it is. VSCode is attractive to people who should be using Emacs, but
were too afraid to try it. But unfortunately what you get is not Emacs, it's a
Microsoft product and if you think they made it because of "love" then you are
incredibly naïve.

------
HelloNurse
Being used to the real Visual Studio, I've always regarded VS Code as a
disposable, low-investment casual tool: it cannot make use of the project and
solution files of its big brother, it lacks major features (e.g. the remote
debugger), it is also casually _engineered_ (e.g. no proper extension
configuration GUI and very loose file caching).

It's just an advanced text editor to edit files (of all types in principle,
mostly Python, JavaScript and JSON in practice) and to make Git commits, not
an IDE to base important work on; I've never tried to set up any sort of
"project" or complex configuration.

As an end user (as opposed to an extension author or "open source"
contributor) I'm not particularly worried about lock-in and proprietary
features because the cost of not using VS Code any more is limited to
switching to a worse editor.

------
submeta
I am very skeptical of Microsoft, even in 2020, with a visionary, embracing
CEO. VS Code is a beautiful product with very nice defaults out of the box,
very polished workflows and user-experience when it comes to extending it.
With this free offer MS drove many competing products out of the market
(Sublime Text anyone?). Google trends for VS Code is sky rocketing.

Thank you Microsoft, but I stick to the intelliJ family when I need a serious
IDE and Emacs for all other text related stuff.

