[juliasilge]

Hello! I work on Positron. We outline some answers here: https://positron.posit.co/faqs.html#how-can-i-use-positron-w...

tl;dr is that the desktop app (including remote SSH sessions) is free to use with a permissive license (no account needed, no subscription, commercial use is OK, etc), but using Positron in a server mode does require a paid subscription.

[teruakohatu]

Can it be run through a web browser like VS Code and RStudio?

Why did you relicense it under Elastic License 2.0 from VSCode’s MIT?

A better alternative would be proprietary extensions under a different license like Microsoft does.

[juliasilge]

Yes, but that is the server mode that is not free to use. If you want a free mode that lets you connect to a server, you might want to check out the remote SSH support: https://positron.posit.co/remote-ssh.html

We talk a bit about why we chose the Elastic license here: https://positron.posit.co/licensing.html

We have thought pretty carefully about what kind of functionality works well in extensions (in fact, we build and maintain a number of extensions!) and came to the decision that the more integrated data science experience we wanted to make required forking.

[notpushkin]

Please consider adding a delayed open-source license/clause :-)

Also, are you using Open VSX, and what’s your take on the recent malware extension story?

[juliasilge]

Thanks for your thoughts on the license; we know that it's FRAUGHT, for sure. Our company makes quite a lot of software available under OSI-approved licenses (MIT, etc) and we did think pretty carefully about what to try here, given our goals around both OSS and building a sustainable business.

We do use OpenVSX, yes, like the other forks, and our company is a major sponsor of OpenVSX. Security around the extension ecosystem is a pretty messy, complicated issue both for the proprietary Microsoft marketplace and OpenVSX. For example, the recent Amazon Q story! I currently think about it as conceptually fairly similar to the risks of using packages from PyPI or npm.

[teruakohatu]

> Thanks for your thoughts on the license; we know that it's FRAUGHT, for sure

There is no doubt that your company maintains a lot of high quality open source code.

But in this case Posit is re-licensing Open Source code, with a "source available" license.

Posit is free to help itself to VSCodium, but not the other way around.

I do hope Posit will one day reconsider this.

[alterom]

Thanks for answering!

>tl;dr is that the desktop app (including remote SSH sessions) is free to use with a permissive license (no account needed, no subscription, commercial use is OK, etc), but using Positron in a server mode does require a paid subscription.

I feel the FAQ would've been better off with this as an answer to a separate question ("Is Positron really free?").

First, this information is hard to infer from the text you have there.

Second, I wouldn't wouldn't know to look for this information in a question about the server mode. I don't know what it is before I look deeply into your product!

Before that, I want to know what is actually free about this platform, and what isn't. Then I can learn what the server mode is.