[fr4nkr]

I noticed this the other day when I installed VSCodium on my new Windows box. I had a functional setup for one day, then the next day I couldn't install a language extension I direly needed.

It's left a very sour taste in my mouth. I've used Emacs for ages and despite being a much more niche editor, it's never been so hard-dependent on centralized repositories, and the centralized repositories it does have (ELPA/MELPA) are apparently a lot more reliable than OpenVSX. Installing Emacs packages manually from source is a breeze, doing so with VSC is masochistic.

VSC is not really "open source" in any meaningful sense. It is just plainly unusable if you don't do things the way Microsoft wants you to. I do respect the VSCodium devs for trying to make VSC more properly open, but it does feel like a futile effort.

[eddythompson80]

I feel that you're conflating few concepts, hackability, "open source", single point of failure architectures.

Yes, VSC is less hackable than emacs, but I don't think it's necessarily the same thing. VSC (and others like it) are going for a more streamlined "App Store" experience, while emacs is going for a more DIY/hackable style editor. You can always fetching the VSIX file and sideload it is if the "store" is down though.

Yes, VSC is less "open source" than emacs. if "open sourceness" is a score out of 10 or something. Pretty sure RMS would argue linux is less "open source" than emacs too.

Not sure why this is futile for the VSCodium devs. They are taking a dependency on a service for installing extensions. The solutions is more readonly mirrors for the official OpenVSX endpoint.

If your main archlinux mirror is down, you don't cry about the centralized state of our life. You use a different mirror. You throw in 5 or 10 in case one or two are down. I understand why a company like Microsoft might want a more centralized service to distribute the extensions. But for an open source clone? is Microsoft also expected to create the mirror clone?

[fr4nkr]

My point about VSC is that brands itself as "open source" when Microsoft clearly intends for it to have a proprietary, tightly controlled ecosystem. It's not just RMS-unapproved, it's practically a lie. You can use it as a FOSS editor, but only if you are willing to accept a vastly subpar experience. Oh, and they've started cracking down on people using their proprietary VSC plugins in derived editors, too.

I expected it to be a little less convenient to leave Microsoft's beaten path. I did not expect it to be a massive waste of time. This is what I meant by futile. Not only is it apparently very brittle, it's missing large swaths of VSC's ecosystem. Hell, I don't even know if the extension I wanted is available on OpenVSX because it's still down!

If Microsoft hadn't openwashed their product, I wouldn't care nearly as much.

Besides, Emacs still provides a streamlined system for managing packages on top of being hackable. It even makes installing and upgrading packages straight from a Git repo easy. Sometimes you can have your cake and eat it too.

[mrlongroots]

Exactly this.

For me, the C/C++ language pack stopped working overnight with Cursor. This was clearly because of commercial concerns about derivative IDEs fairly and squarely gaining traction over the original product. But it broke my workflow a couple hours before a meeting.

I use neovim with LSPs and this is unimaginable in my world. I have started using IDEs only because the productivity gains from better LLM integration are undeniable. Sure I moved to clangd in Cursor and it was all fine, but the IDE actively pushes you to install Microsoft extensions, that can be yanked off whenever some Msft PM decides "oh we didn't actually want our competitors to be making money".

LLVM/GCC/Neovim/Apache projects are open-source. Anything that is "open-source until it is not" is not open source, and this perfectly describes VSCode today.

[firejake308]

I saw someone mention Avante on here a few days ago, which looks like it tries to emulate the Cursor experience in Neovim. Might be worth a look: https://github.com/yetone/avante.nvim

[bayindirh]

When people started to toot the horn of VSCode, esp. younger, inexperienced people, I personally warned quite a few of them about Microsoft's practices and motivations. Of course, who listens to a graybeard who's talking about impending doom? All answered " Microsoft <3 Open Source, what are you talking about?"

And here we are.

I hate to be right about things sometimes.

[cortesoft]

> You can use it as a FOSS editor, but only if you are willing to accept a vastly subpar experience.

Why is this Microsoft's fault, though? Nothing is stopping the open source community from creating a more resilient extension distribution system.

[throwup238]

The problem isn't the distribution system, it's the licenses on the flagship Microsoft extensions that provide C/C++, Python, Javascript/Typescript, etc. support. Those licenses are entirely Microsoft's fault.

[jhanschoo]

My 2pence. C/C++ experience on VSCode is still subpar compared to other IDEs. Python is good, but very viable alternatives to VSCode exist. The biggest unique value proposition regarding languages is in TypeScript support. Support for many other languages still come from authorities from those languages who have no issue making them available on the open registry.

For me, the killer proprietary extension is their remote development extensions.

[miohtama]

Language servers are open source. One can write your own extension like we do today for Vim and Emacs.

There is no reason we should expect Microsoft to invest tens of millions of dollars into a product development and give it free for competitors like Cursor. That's not just rational, even for companies that are not Microsoft.

[filmgirlcw]

100% this. It would be one thing if the only LSPs you could build came from Microsoft, but that’s just not true. It’s just that developing LSPs isn’t free.

Cursor, Windsurf, etc. are building multi-billion dollar businesses off the backs of the work that the VS Code team has done. And that’s totally fine! What’s not fine, is trying to have access to the whole ecosystem of first party extensions that aren’t MIT licensed.

I agree there should be more resilient extension repos, but this is one of the problems Eclipse Theia [0] has tried to take on, but most projects just fork the core VS Code experience and slot in OpenVSX rather than doing the hard, expensive work of building their own extension marketplaces or LSPs. And you know what, for a community or OSS fork, I think that’s fair. I think when you raise hundreds of millions in funding, you can build your own LSPs and start to maintain your own infra for extensions. And if you’ve got enough buy-in, you can probably convince developers to submit directly to your marketplace too.

And it isn’t even a rug pull, per se. The first changes to the license on some of the 1P VS Code extensions probably happened in late 2018 or early 2019, with remote share. The LSPs may have changed later. If anything, the Code team was probably too lax about letting the commercial forks use their resources wholesale against the license terms for as long as they did.

Disclaimer: I used to work at Microsoft and then at GitHub with things that touched VS Code. I now work at Google, who uses VS Code (well Monaco) inside some of our editors/products, but I don’t work on any of those.

[0]: https://theia-ide.org/

[throwup238]

> There is no reason we should expect Microsoft to invest tens of millions of dollars into a product development and give it free for competitors like Cursor. That's not just rational, even for companies that are not Microsoft.

It's an "open source" IDE. It costs nothing. All of the money they make from it is on top of the integrations like Azure Devops and Github that would make just as much money (if not even more thanks to vibe coding increasing accessibility) in Cursor, Windsurf, and VSCodium. Microsoft isn't a charity and they've been investing those tens of millions of dollars for a reason: to get a return. That's fine, that's what capitalism is (like it or not).

What's not fine is their schizophrenic approach to open source that looks very much like the classic Micro$oft embrace, extend, extinguish*. They're literally trying to extinguish competitors that are doing better than them by restricting the ecosystem after supposedly and ostensibly embracing open source. I lived through the IE6 era and this doesn't feel much different. Same player, slightly different game.

It's probably driven by some politically powerful PM or VP who perfectly resembles the Dilbert principle. Just like the degradation happening in the Windows OS front, it's just Conway's law happening all over again.

* Which if I may remind everyone, is a phrase straight out of the DOJ's discovery. Microsoft came up with the term.

[watusername]

I wonder if more differentiated branding would have helped. Chrome/Chromium is another example that came to mind: Like "Code - OSS" (the open-source base of VSCode), Chromium works just fine as a browser but with fewer Google-related features (syncing, DRM, etc). People seem to happily use Chromium despite the limitations (many actively seek them!), and I don't remember there being a controversy like this.

[pdntspa]

It's very easy to point VSCodium at the official MS extension marketplace. Everything works.

[amarshall]

> Yes, VSC is less "open source" than emacs. if "open sourceness" is a score out of 10 or something.

VS Code is not Open Source, period. What exists in the “Visual Studio Code - Open Source” repo that is MIT licensed but cannot be used to build VS Code. Once-upon-a-time it was just branding, telemetry, and a license to use the Microsoft Extension Marketplace. Now, however, there are proprietary, closed-source extensions and additions that are only available in the proprietary-licensed VS Code.

> You can always fetching the VSIX file and sideload it is if the "store" is down though.

No, you cannot do so legally (in the context of using Vscodium or similar), as it is a violation of [the VS Code Marketplace ToS][1]: “You may not import, install, or use Offerings published by Microsoft or GitHub, or Microsoft affiliates in any products or services except for the In-Scope Products and Services.”

[1]: https://cdn.vsassets.io/v/M253_20250303.9/_content/Microsoft...

[johnnyjeans]

violating a corporation's terms of service isn't unlawful. outside of that corporation, at least.

[cmeacham98]

It is not criminal, but it is unlawful.

[mystified5016]

EULAs and TOS are not legal agreements. It is not unlawful to break them.

The TOS is purely a thing that the owner can point at as a legitimate reason for banning you.

There is no law anywhere binding you to the terms of an EULA or TOS. It's even less binding than a verbal agreement and a handshake.

[cmeacham98]

Honestly incredible this level of misinformation is getting posted on HN: https://www.google.com/search?channel=fs&q=are+eula+legally+...

[teruakohatu]

> is Microsoft also expected to create the mirror clone?

Allowing open source VS Code (ie. VS Code you compiled from Microsoft’s repo) to access extensions would be enough. Nobody is asking Microsoft for more than basic access. It’s does not even require a code changes, just a policy change.

Even Google allows Chrome forks to access the Chrome Store.

[Macha]

I do wonder if Manifest v3 caused a large jump in users moving to Brave or Vivaldi or whatever, if Google would keep that policy.

[pdntspa]

Not even a policy change, you update one file in AppData and you're in.

[goku12]

> Pretty sure RMS would argue linux is less "open source" than emacs too.

The word you're looking for is 'free'. Free as in freedom and free software. The open source philosophy focuses on the openness of the code base and the associated advantages. Free software philosophy highlights the freedom that the software gives its user on their devices. Opening the source code is just a means to that end for the free software philosophy. Most open source software are also free software. But a few software like VSC and Chrome manages to be open while holding back the freedom from its users. Stallman and others tried to highlight this difference, but were largely neglected. The large scale ignorance of this distinction is what led to spread of travesties like the Chrome browser.

I completely agree with GP on this matter. I use centralized repos for Emacs like ELPA and MELPA like a metadata source. The actual packages are downloaded directly from their git repos. All these happen transparently and failure is practically non-existent, even in the absence of mirrors. In contrast with such convenience, the only way to fully utilize VSC extensions market is to use MS's proprietary build of VSC. If you tried installing some essential extensions (like remote editing and editor sharing) on a fork or an open source build of VSC, it would 'conveniently' tell you that it doesn't work on an alternate build and instead give you the link to download the proprietary build. Some of these functionality don't even need an extension on Emacs (eg: tramp). What are the justifications for such restrictions? They alone know. But I'm sure that they aren't technical. You're probably too busy to worry about the politics behind it, whenever you find yourself in such a situation. It's quiet manipulative in my opinion. And all these were before MS started banning VSC forks from their marketplace.

[BlueTemplar]

Speaking of, 4 freedoms might not be enough any more :

https://elevenfreedoms.org/

[Zambyte]

4-10 all seem to just be special cases of 0-3. I guess making them explicit can be nice, but it seems overly complex to me.

[int_19h]

It's even worse. VSCode used to be more open source originally, back when it was enthusiastically adopted. And then, gradually, official extensions started replacing parts with closed blobs with onerous licensing terms. C# and Python extensions have both suffered from this. Although the C++ one was never fully open, if I remember correctly.

[wilsonnb3]

Same for the c# one I think, the old language server was and is still open source but the .net core debugger has always been proprietary.

I imagine it is because it is derived from the Visual Studio debugger in some fashion. JetBrains ran into the same problem with Rider back in the .NET core days and had to write their own debugger.

[neonsunset]

Roslyn language server is OSS too: https://github.com/dotnet/roslyn/tree/main/src/LanguageServe...

There was never an issue with Omnisharp OSS-ness itself nor what replaced it. It was always about debugger and then "Dev Kit" extension which builds on top of the base one - "Dev Kit" is what isn't OSS and what requires an account.

There is also an alternate open debugger: https://github.com/Samsung/netcoredbg / https://github.com/muhammadsammy/free-vscode-csharp (extension fork which swaps vsdbg out for this one)

[fhcbix]

I was gonna write this. Package management with distributed mirrors for both speed + redundancy are a solved problem in the Linux world. Ship trusted signing keys and even the shadiest mirror becomes verifiable.

[bogwog]

For context, Open VSX is run by the Eclipse foundation, which also develops the Eclipse Theia editor, which is basically a clone of VS Code (not a fork, like VS Codium).

The Open VSX registry is open source (https://github.com/eclipse/openvsx) and self-hostable, although I have no experience with that. I assume it's possible to host your own instance with the extensions you want instead of relying on the free public instance.

Personally I'm more of a Sublime guy, but people looking for an open VSC alternative should consider Theia over VSC forks. It seems like the smarter long term investment if you want to get out from Microsoft's control.

[bobajeff]

Even though I've heard of Theia Editor before I don't think I've ever seriously looked at it until now. It honestly looks like a good alternative to vscode. (It basically looks like a straight up clone, which is good for me) I'll definitely give it a try.

[TiredOfLife]

Theia is based on Microsoft Monaco editor. Its a fork with a different ui

[Macha]

I think if it was a distro like VSCodium, you could call it a fork. But Monaco is a small piece of VS Code. It's a text widget. A _nice_ text widget, but you can play with bare Monaco here:

https://microsoft.github.io/monaco-editor/playground.html

You could shove this widget alone into electron and call the result a text editor, and I mean, Notepad was basically this for the windows text entry component for years, but it's a long way away from VS Code, or from Theia.

[blackoil]

The model is called Open Core, so is well understood so I am not sure what is causing this confusion. The editor is open source as evident from a dozen forks. The complete experience which includes extensions has closed source pieces which the forks won't access to. But OSS community can build replacement or other companies can provide alternatives.

Just because pylance is available doesn't stop jetbrains/Google/OSS from creating an LS. Maybe no such exists as if now, but not from a technical blocker. Just no one created one.

[veidr]

It’s plenty open source — that is why all these forks exist!

VS Code itself does not work without various propriety stuff, but that is a different thing. A large number of open-source projects work that way. If you don’t like the proprietary stuff, the recourse is to fork it, modify it, and implement the remaining stuff yourself.

[ezst]

https://ghuntley.com/fracture/ ; I'll just leave this here.

[veidr]

Yeah, I know all about that stuff. But nevertheless, you _can_ fork it.

Is it the most awesome, selfless, altruistic version of open source? Clearly not.

But is it better than being proprietary closed-source software? Well, that's a value judgement, so we can each decide that for ourselves. Personally, I think so, but maybe it depends. Regardless, though, it's open source, and if it weren't the software landscape would look very different.

Cursor, Windsurf, etc. would presumably not be as far along as they are, because they'd have to invest in basic editor functionality. Among many other projects, both open-source and otherwise.

[ezst]

> Regardless, though, it's open source

Some major bits and pieces of the base editor are, but little of what makes vscode into a usable productive tool (namely, the refined extensions and LSP implementations around it, i.e. what users come to expect when they install it in the first place) is open-source. vscode put a lot of marketing effort into being perceived as open-source so to buy sympathy from eventual users.

Let's stop at "vscode is open-source in a very narrow and limited capacity, and thoroughly deceptive in its messaging".

I would honestly love to see the result of a survey asking vscode users whether they think they are using an open-source product, and how much of that is actually verified based on the extensions being used.

[veidr]

> Let's stop at "vscode is open-source in a very narrow and limited capacity, and thoroughly deceptive in its messaging".

OK, yes, I agree; we should stop, as the disagrement seems to boil down to semantics.

I think "open source" is basically binary (modulo the usual free-as-in-beer or free-as-in-beer-but-also-you-can't-do-stuff-I-don't-like ambiguity).

But some nuance does come into play around "VS Code" — what is it? It feels the same as Chrome to me, but it's harder to see where the VS Code equivalent of Chromium is. (Not super hard, mind you, but Chrome/Chromium make it explicit, whereas VS Code does not.)

Anyway, I agree that VS Code is (while still, IMO, "open-source") is not "open-source to the point of maximal awesomeness".

[arccy]

Microsoft has never been pro open source, yet so many devs fell for their marketing lies.

[genewitch]

Walmart used to claim they supported US businesses. A lot of people remember the ads and the native ads, especially in southern California when Wal-Mart was trying to make inroads there in the late 90s.

Walmart. Bringing back home. ™

The CEO even said the quiet part out loud in one of the commercials in the early 90s, roughly "we'll buy American products, unless they're lesser quality or more expensive" and trailed off, and the editors back then weren't as tuned in to corpo-speak or something.

Of course the countries with more lax environmental regulations and worker protections will have a cheaper product; the entire thing was a sham from the beginning.

[wilsonnb3]

Microsoft is pro open source, it's just that they use it as a means rather than an end which trips up a lot of people who view open source differently.

Its a tool they use to encourage adoption of their developer tools and get people to spend more money in Azure, not a philosophical stance.

[999900000999]

You can always clone the extensions repo and build locally. Should take 10 minutes at most

I’m not sure how this could actually work without a centralized repo.

If I’m going to use VSCode I’ll just use it, I don’t need to play with forks, etc

[tiahura]

Pointless was my thought after initially installing it years ago. Ok, I’m installing this open source “clean” version, just to install a bunch of MS proprietary spyware extensions? Why not just use the real thing?

[Hasnep]

Nowadays there are good alternatives to some of the proprietary Microsoft extensions, I use the basedpyright extension on VSCodium and prefer it to Microsoft's proprietary Pylance. I've also heard good things about the clangd extension as an alternative to the C/C++ extension.

[theanonymousone]

I have a failing CI/CD pipeline. I use a reproducible development setup based on Coder.com's Code Server..