https://github.com/microsoft/vscode-cpptools/discussions/126...
Having not delved too deeply into building from source, this post suggests it's not even possible.
We will need some new terminology to express that a given codebase is OSS licensed and the build dependencies additionally are OSS licensed.
as brewster says: 'governments burn libraries'
there's a reason that the first backup of the internet archive is at alexandria and that the first time brewster started the internet archive it was a for-profit company called 'alexa'
* main (free software)
* non-fee
* contrib (free software that depends on software outside of main, so usually non-free software)
in a few tiny comments it demonstrates precisely the problem the larger ecosystem is facing and will almost certainly get much much worse sooner than we think.
Much F/OSS on Windows and virtually all F/OSS on macOS has proprietary build dependencies (e.g., MSVC on Windows, Xcode and various Apple frameworks and GUI toolkits on macOS), but is still itself F/OSS. It's true that such software doesn't promote or embody software freedom to the same extent as free software written for free platforms and built with free toolchains and dependencies.
But this case isn't about that. Reread the comment of maintainer (presumably an MS employee) at the end:
> I'm sorry to let you know that our license also prohibits using our extension in alternate distributions of VS Code - only the official one produced by Microsoft may be used. So even if we did produce a RISC-V version, you wouldn't be licensed to use it with Code Server.
That's just proprietary, software plain and simple.
Recall freedom 0 of the free software definition:
> The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose (freedom 0).
In the way that third-party distributions of VSCode do not come with the same rights to extend the software or use it in combination with compatible extensions as the first-party distribution does, VSCode also fails the test of freedom 3, regardless of the license of much of the code:
> The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others (freedom 3). By doing this you can give the whole community a chance to benefit from your changes. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
It's not that your modified copies must give your users the same rights to inspect and modify the code as you had (that's copyleft) but that you are unable to give them such rights. MS does this not entirely through the licensing of VSCode but also through the licensing of certain extensions, but the actual outcome is the same.
It's not a different story for the term open-source. This:
> May we ask why you'd like to do this? If you're planning to redistribute the language server binaries as your own custom offering, please note that our runtime license prohibits that.
means that the extension fails condition 1 (the redistribution criterion) of the open-source definition. And VSCode not allowing modified redistributions the same rights as the original fails condition 3 (the derived works criterion).
Neither VSCode nor this extension is open-source. They're both just proprietary software with some open-source components.
Free Software Definition: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html.en#four-freedoms
Open-Source Definition: https://opensource.org/osd
Note that these are not definitions in the ordinary lexographical sense. They are terms that were created with explicit social and technical purposes in mind, by and for organized movements. This isn't an argument from the dictionary but a reminder of the purposes of these concepts.
Partly true, partly false. VS Code is FOSS (MIT license). The VS Code binary that Microsoft distributes is freeware (proprietary license).
> and neither is this extension
Correct.
> That's just proprietary, software plain and simple.
Indeed, the Pylance extension is proprietary software.
> In the way that third-party distributions of VSCode do not come with the same rights to extend the software or use it in combination with compatible extensions
False. Third party distributions of VSCode can absolutely use compatible extensions. The license of certain proprietary extensions does not allow you to use them with third party distributions of VSCode.
> It's not that your modified copies must give your users the same rights to inspect and modify the code as you had (that's copyleft) but that you are unable to give them such rights. MS does this not entirely through the licensing of VSCode but also through the licensing of certain extensions
The VSCode license prevents you from reverse engineering, modifying it, and you agree to send some telemetry to Microsoft. You're correct that the MS distribution is not FOSS. It's the same with Chrome (the code base) and Chrome (the browser binaries that Google distributes).
> Neither VSCode nor this extension is open-source.
Again, to be clear: VSCode (the binary) is not OSS, but the source code used to build VSCode (the binary) *is* OSS. Pylance (the extension) is straight up proprietary software.
> Note that these are not definitions in the ordinary lexographical sense. They are terms that were created with explicit social and technical purposes in mind, by and for organized movements. This isn't an argument from the dictionary but a reminder of the purposes of these concepts.
The MIT license represents a different view on the social and technical goals of open source software. It's much simpler than the GPLs and only has one obligation for the user/redistributors: display a copyright notice. It's not as copyleft as the GPLs.
Edit: to be clear, I think Microsoft should offer VSCodium themselves and state clearly that they take that, bundle it with other stuff, and are calling that blob VSCode.
The instant they do that I'm moving to Theia or something else (zed?). MS is not to be trusted, as outlined by this article.
> The MIT license represents a different view on the social and technical goals of open source software. It's much simpler than the GPLs and only has one obligation for the user/redistributors: display a copyright notice. It's not as copyleft as the GPLs.
The MIT license is a tool used for a range of purposes, not an expression of values. It doesn't 'represent a view' about how software should be developed or distributed in the same way that documents like, e.g., the FSF's account of the four fundamental software freedoms, the OSI's Open-Source Definition, or the Debian Free Software Guidelines do. It sits at a different layer. Moreover, all of those documents incontestably include MIT-licensed software among the licenses that embody their values-- none of those organizations or movements they participate in exclude permissively licensed software.
That some source code is distributed under the terms of the MIT license only tells us a little bit about the way and extent to which it is or isn't aligned with the values and touted benefits of either the free software movement or the open-source movement. There are individuals (and organizations, if you count the contributor bases of large, relatively organized software projects) who are interested in software freedom and/or open-source development but averse to copyleft, but permissive licenses don't themselves exclusively support only one set of values and goals or constitute a statement of allegiance to other doctrines (and neither do copyleft licenses).
And that's part of what makes statements of values and ideas that go beyond licenses per se, like the ones I cited but also books like Free Software, Free Society and The Cathedral and the Bazaar, and the many shorter online documents one can find at FSF.org, EFF.org, sfconservancy.org, or even the OSI's policy advocacy work valuable: they transmit the things that copyright licenses cannot. They are reminders that adopting software and software development practices means making choices about entering into concrete relations of power, dependency, collaboration, and competition. The F/OSS licenses are instruments in service of meaningful choices about those things. And that's exactly the way that my recourse to things like the Open-Source Definition and the FSF's article What is Free Software was not to make a merely verbal dispute, arguing about what words mean, but a move to ground this discussion in the range of first-order values for which F/OSS licenses are instruments. That's something equally relevant and equally worth doing whether the licenses in question are maximally permissive (like the technically-not-a-license of donating a codebase to the public domain), strong copyleft licenses like AGPLv3, or something else like LGPL or MPL.
The same front-end powers their Visual Studio IDE (not Code).
Also, AFAIK, there exist an alternative `clangd`-based C++ extension, which is fully open-source (but I could be wrong).