[sbuttgereit]

OK, I'll bite...

"...that enable developers, organizations, and vendors to create new, extensible solutions that avoid the fees associated with VS Code."

What fees are they talking about? VS Code is not my regular editor, but the whole thing seems to indicate confusion between "Visual Studio" and "Visual Studio Code". I am missing something or is the Eclipse Foundation really conflating the two?

[JayfromEclipse]

On behalf of the Eclipse Foundation, sorry for the mistake. The reference to the “fees” in the draft version of the Theia announcement posted to eclipse.org this morning was not correct. The official press release that was issued this morning removed the incorrect reference to fees. The release on eclipse.org has now been updated to match the official press release here: https://www.eclipse.org/org/press-release/20200331-theia.php. Our apologies for this discrepancy and any resulting confusion.

[ASalazarMX]

So, avoid the non-existent fees of Microsoft and change them for the non-existent fees of Oracle and IBM. Sold!

But seriously, the Eclipse Foundation would be a much trustworthier steward for a wide-used IDE than Microsoft. Unfortunately, Eclipse is in the same situation Firefox was against Chrome 5 years ago: it's slow compared to other Java IDEs like Jetbrain's.

[tensor]

I wouldn't trust Oracle. Is this going to be like VirtualBox which is "free" and "open source" except for the extension pack on the very same page that you can one click download?

If anyone isn't aware, they track the IP address of that extension and if they can trace it back to your company they then come calling for money. It's basically a sort of litigation honey pot. Sure, it's all legal, but it's such a nasty dark pattern and so easy of a mistake to make for end users that it should be illegal.

[jdc]

But just to be clear, Oracle does not control Eclipse IP.

[tw04]

How so? They're on the board of directors. They might not have SOLE control, but you're implying they have NO control. I'm not sure how they can both be on the board of directors while simultaneously having no control of the Eclipse IP.

https://www.eclipse.org/org/foundation/directors.php

[RobLach]

You’re right.

It’s controlled by IBM, Fujitsu, Bosch, and Oracle.

[tensor]

That's a relief, the post above made it sound that way.

[ysleepy]

Hm. I remember it having utterly horrible UX and looks, but being slow wasn't really a problem. Especially the live compilation and whole project compilation error marking is something IntelliJ has not yet accomplished.

[sbuttgereit]

Yeah... but what the original post is about isn't the old Eclipse IDE we've all known and loved (to hate, maybe). But a new entry in the Electron based text editor craze... to me just glancing over the website, it looks like a VS Code clone.

That the Eclipse IDE itself is more an analogue to Visual Studio proper could be where some on the Eclipse marketing team are mixing up the two and mentioning "VS Code fees".

[ASalazarMX]

You're right, it's a Javascript (Typescript) IDE, not the good old Eclipse; they're on equal footing.

[reaperducer]

Yeah, I don't see the point of this, either.

If you're looking for an alternative to Visual Studio Code, isn't that what VS Codium is for?

[bilbo0s]

Why switch from VS Code to Codium? That makes even less sense than a switch to Eclipse.

If you're on VS Code, just use VS Code. If you're on Eclipse, just use Eclipse.

But yeah, get to market. Quibbling over quasi-religious beliefs, like X is better than Y, is exactly what allows some kid on his couch in his boxers watching SportsCenter while working on his website to beat your funded startup to market.

[reaperducer]

Why switch from VS Code to Codium?

For me, it was because I don't want to be spied on by Microsoft. VS Codium is VS Code without the telemetry and tracking.

[flyinglizard]

As I became involved in more and more products and customer feedback, I started opting into telemetry collection programs. It’s ultimately what helps make the products I use better.

[GordonS]

Firstly, let me say that I'm a big advocate for privacy.

But, for products I love, I also sometimes opt in to telemetry - it depends on the product, the company, and the data that's collected.

In the case of Visual Studio Code, it's very clear what data is collected, and I decided I was fine with it. It's free, it's OSS, and I want to help make it even better.

My only gripe with VS Code is that the telemetry is opt-out, rather than opt-in. Yes, it's easy to opt-out, but that's not the point - IMO, it should always be opt-in.

[reaperducer]

In my opinion, you're doing it either wrong or lazy.

My company doesn't do telemetry. We do actual user testing with actual users, even to the point of shadowing them as they use the product. The same way it's been done for the last 40 years.

You learn more from interfacing with the wetware than you do grepping logs.

[jakear]

Why not both? User testing won't help you with questions like "there's a bug in feature X, but the fix will potentially impact feature Y in unforeseen ways. Given we're shipping soon, is it a good idea to apply the fix now or should we apply a much simpler mitigation and postpose the full fix till next iteration so we can get more testing in or even implement a larger refactoring that would resolve this category of bugs by design?"

If feature X is used way less frequently than feature Y, the answer is obvious. If feature Y is used way less frequently than feature X, the answer is obvious. If its a wash, you move on to look at different metrics.

This isn't a hypothetical, I ran this exact scenario yesterday against the VS Code telemetry.

I applied the mitigation, the refactoring is coming next week. :)

[GordonS]

For some products, yes, user shadowing, interviews and testing is enough.

But in the case of VS Code, I agree with the other commenters that you can benefit from both.

VS Code supports many languages, source control systems, workflows, external systems and extensions, and it's used by a very wide spectrum of users and developers. I can see why they believe telemetry is required to better understand how it's used.

[cookiecaper]

They don't have to be mutually exclusive, do they? You can surely learn some things from large-scale telemetry collection that you can't learn from user studies (e.g., semi-representative "in the wild" performance metrics).

[manigandham]

People act differently when they're being watched. Capturing the normal usage as they work with your product without any oversight can reveal a lot.

[prophesi]

Erm, how does it make less sense? Codium is literally more vscode than VS Code itself. So if you're on VS Code, just use Codium.

[haolez]

I think they meant the web versions of VSCode that many vendors sell. But their message was very badly written.

[_-david-_]

I am guessing the person may not have English as a first language and meant to say 'costs' instead of 'fees'. I am not sure which costs they would be talking about. Perhaps telemetry or the limitations they mention in the article.

[sbuttgereit]

I don't that's the issue. The post is credited to:

Nichols Communications for the Eclipse Foundation, Inc. Jay Nichols

A public relations business based in San Francisco should have that sorted out whether or not the actual author was a native English speaker or not.

[_-david-_]

It just says media contact. I am not clear if that means they actually wrote it or not?

At the top of the article it says Ottawa (which is where the headquarters of the Eclipse Foundation is located). There are a lot of French speakers around there so I assumed it was a French speaker who wrote it.

Regardless it seems like somebody at Eclipse should have reviewed the memo before it was released.