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Comment by thesuperbigfrog | Hacker News Reader

>> "We plan to create a new “LSP Tools Host” component (not an official name ), which integrates both open-source components, like Roslyn and Razor, with closed-source components, offering a wider array of tooling capabilities."

>> "Once the “LSP Tools Host” is complete, this will become the default experience for the C# for VS Code extension. Existing users will be able to choose between the open-source OmniSharp powered system that exists today, or the new “'LSP Tools Host” which will provide access to additional experiences. The “LSP Tools Host” will not be open-sourced, but we plan to communicate with the community along the way to help guide our future plans."

'Microsoft <3 Open Source' unless it threatens a business unit.

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They did the same thing with closed source Pylance, which is built on top of the open source Pyright. Pretty despicable behavior no matter how you cut it.

I'm by no means in favor of closed source extensions, but I feel it's worth mentioning that yes, Pyright is open source and Pylance isn't, but Pyright is also a Microsoft project. You can hardly make the argument that keeping all parts closed source would have been better.

I didn't mean to imply otherwise only that building prop. extensions on top of their own open extensions is nothing new for them and smacks of bad faith engagement.

How is that bad faith? Isn’t that, for example, exactly what Gitlab does?

It would be bad faith if they removed access to the open source code somehow.

It's advertised as open source, but the published source code isn't what people actually run (when using their official binaries).

They have full right to do this. They are still scumbags for doing it.

Nobody should be terribly surprised when a giant corporation behaves like a scumbag; it's a fundamental feature of such organizations. We as individuals have the responsibility of shunning them when they do this.

I'm curious, why are they scumbags?

Aren't they free to decide how their time and effort is used? Do they have some inherent obligation to work for you for free(which is what open source is)?

If you develop some piece of software, and use the open core model, I wouldn't consider you a scumbag.

You speak of them as if they were a person. Microsoft is not a person, so they indeed do not have the same rights as people do. Specifically, they can be called what they are with a far lower threshold than people, especially with the reputation they have accumulated over the decades.

I'm not totally familiar with their past actions, but you specifically called the fact that pylance is not open source (while the "pyright" core is) a "scumbag move", which is what I am arguing is unfair.

So I'm having trouble figuring out your position: is Microsoft a scumbag for not open sourcing pylance or not?

FWIW, I was, until recently, a daily user of pyright, and it's, by a million miles, the best LSP for python out there. The maintainer of pyright also contributes a LOT towards pushing forward the static typing ecosystem in python. In fact, the most recent PEP in Python static typing was initiated, drafted, and first implemented, by the maintainer of pyright[0].

Microsoft also has hired Guido Van Rossum to work on Python full time.

So I think calling Microsoft scumbags about an aspect of how they engage with the Python ecosystem is not only unfair, but totally misleading.

[0] https://peps.python.org/pep-0681/

You again talk about individuals and individual behavior and then switch seamlessly into talking about Microsoft. Even worse, you insinuate that dislike of Microsoft behavior is equal to dislike of individual Microsoft-adjacent peoples’ behavior.

No. These things are not the same and they should never be equated.

I talked about the maintainer of Pyright (Eric Taut), and I talked about Guido Van Rossum. Both are currently salaried employees as Microsoft. The work they are doing is unambiguously enabled by the salaries that Microsoft pays them. They are not "Microsoft-adjacent", they are employed by Microsoft.

If one wants to evaluate Microsoft's moral standing with regards to their participation in the Python ecosystem, one must take into account the work done on the Python ecosystem by Microsoft's salaried employees, in their working hours, no?

don't really understand this mentality. I think people or organizations who create software, or anything really, ought to have the right (not just legally, but ethically) to determine how much of it they want to open up, given that they've built it.

I don't see the relationship to giant corporations either. Sublime is proprietary, Datomic is, a lot of bespoke tools are because the creators depend on capturing their full value.

We use pyright, great software with extremely quick support and fixes. I think they have a full time developer on this project. You seem pretty entitled.

Also, remember that Microsoft added code to Pylance to see if you were running an open-source build of VS Code and to refuse to work if you were.

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