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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.

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.

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.

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

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.

> 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.

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.

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.

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.

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/

> 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.

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

> 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...

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

It is not criminal, but it is unlawful.

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.

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

Caveat: this is not universal and depends on the juridiction.

For example in France a software/service editor can only really attack a user if he is infringing on copyrighted stuff. Outside of that the EULAs only allow it to ban/remove access to its services without risk of legal retaliation. And by infringing copyright I mean redistribution of copyrighted material, not downloading and using it. I am sure this is the case in many other countries.

This is again, wrong. EULA is just another word for "contract", and I'm not aware of any countries that have banned contracts.

Of course, specific EULAs may not be enforceable in some countries because they contain terms prohibited by law. But the concept of EULAs - a contract where you agree to certain terms in exchange for license to use software is enforceable in basically all countries.

IANAL, but the "A" is "agreement," which is only true if entered into. If I put a sentence at the top of my website that says "by loading this page you are agreeing to my terms of $1,000,000 per byte downloaded, payable by bitcoin" you are for sure not under any obligation that I can imagine because you didn't agree to my ~~terms~~ demand

A contract is only valid if you sign it, not because someone in his office unilateraly decided you have agreed.

> 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.

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.

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

> 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.

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

https://elevenfreedoms.org/

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.

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.

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.

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)

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.