[HN Gopher] Microsoft is introducing hidden APIs to VS Code only...
___________________________________________________________________
Microsoft is introducing hidden APIs to VS Code only enabled for
Copilot
Author : kannthu
Score : 291 points
Date : 2024-10-21 19:11 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (old.reddit.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (old.reddit.com)
| de6u99er wrote:
| Lloks like Microsoft is going back to it's old ways. I am not
| surprised tbh.
| rapind wrote:
| It worked out so well for them with the browser... oh wait.
| jampekka wrote:
| IE had over 50% market share for over 10 years. It was likely
| a major factor for Windows holding the desktop OS monopoly.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| What's the harm here if the APIs are temporary and they don't
| have a history of elongating the lives of temporary APIs like
| this? They've stated the purpose of these "proposed APIs" and
| we have no evidence from the last decade to believe they'd
| renege on their stated goals.
| dartos wrote:
| > What's the harm here if the APIs are temporary
|
| The "if" is carrying a lot of weight.
|
| It gives Microsoft a solid competitive edge and a form of
| vendor lock-in in their otherwise mostly open product.
|
| We don't know that they'll be temporary forever.
|
| > They've stated the purpose of these "proposed APIs"
|
| Just like how they said recall would not be a required
| feature, but is a dependency of the file explorer in the next
| version of windows?
|
| Microsoft will say whatever looks good for them, obviously.
|
| > last decade
|
| But we do from the last 11+ years ;)
|
| I'd always err on the side of not trusting giant monopolistic
| corporations with a history of garnering good will to cash in
| on it later.
|
| Especially when that company has been very aggressively
| inserting itself in nearly every JS projects
| dependency/software delivery pipelines.
|
| I gain nothing by trusting them, but I stand to lose my
| project's independence from them.
| ndiddy wrote:
| The harm is that third-party developers aren't allowed to
| publish extensions that use "proposed APIs", but Copilot
| doesn't have to follow these rules because Microsoft both
| develops the extension and runs the Extension Marketplace
| website. Microsoft is therefore able to add functionality to
| their extension that third-party developers can only add by
| forking VS Code. VS Code forks lose access to the Extension
| Marketplace, and many Microsoft-published extensions (such as
| Pylance and LiveShare) will only run on official Microsoft
| builds of VS Code, not forks.
| dartos wrote:
| Going back?
|
| When did they stop?
| de6u99er wrote:
| True!
| hggigg wrote:
| There was that bit a few years back where the HN folk saw
| Satya as the second coming of Microsoft and anything even
| slightly critical or suspicious of Microsoft was downvoted to
| oblivion as highly implausible. I think people are still
| coming down from that high.
|
| He's not the messiah, he's a naughty businessman!
|
| (Note: I shot my HN account then because the majority of the
| MS stuff on here was utterly intolerable for many of us who
| have been MS devs/users since day zero and have the mental
| scarring)
|
| Edit: remind me to post this when MS staff are still asleep
| next time...
| dartos wrote:
| People on HN seem to be either very anti-corporatist or
| love to white knight big tech
|
| There's no in between.
| hggigg wrote:
| Hey I'm right in the middle: I use a Mac and use open
| source software on it, while moaning how shitty both are.
| dartos wrote:
| Enlightened enough to know that open source is good, but
| smart enough to realize that it's a pain.
|
| I've embraced the pain and have been using Linux as my
| daily driver for like 5 years.
| hggigg wrote:
| Yeah not happening here. I am Adobe and Apple's bitch.
|
| I mean I'd really like to but the software I use just
| isn't there.
| fragmede wrote:
| the inbetweeners who are here aren't motivated to post
| about being in-between, which is why it reads that way,
| unfortunately.
| dartos wrote:
| The classic internet engagement bias.
| boredtofears wrote:
| It's possible to be both critical of Microsoft's past and
| also pleased at their last decade of efforts in OSS with
| things like vscode and typescript.
| dartos wrote:
| It's possible to do both of those and still not trust MS.
|
| I don't believe that vscode will be this free mostly open
| editor forever. I'm expecting to see vscode pro or
| something any day.
|
| Typescript can, very cynically, be seen as an on-ramp for
| vscode, as vscode has pretty much the best typescript
| suppor.
| boredtofears wrote:
| Luckily that's why we have OSS licenses, if/when they do
| that there will be a community fork.
| rty32 wrote:
| I mean, Microsoft has been very clear about their business
| model of VSCode -- similar to Chromium, the base product is
| free and you can do whatever you want (and indeed there are
| lots of products reusing the core of VSCode), but extension
| marketplace/remote/GitHub Copilot are proprietary. It sounds
| like a fair deal to me -- Microsoft can't just do open source
| without expecting to get _something_ in return.
|
| Now, coming back to private APIs, it's hard to know whether
| this is because Microsoft intentionally wants to keep
| competition out, or it is just hard to standardize/finalize
| APIs. I do know that VSCode development team takes extreme care
| when it comes to their APIs -- new features can take years
| before they are ready (most recenly coverage APIs, for
| example), and they don't want to release something when it's
| not ready, and I respect that. And to be fair, they have a
| number of "inline completion" APIs standardized as both VSCode
| APIs and LSP protocol (upcoming). I'm sure there is a lot to be
| desired, but it should be a nuanced discussion instead of
| simply "Microsoft bad".
|
| (I am a VSCode extension & LSP author, not affiliated with
| Microsoft at all)
| rcarmo wrote:
| This. LSP is a great example of something that also takes a
| while to flesh out because the problem space spans a lot
| (syntax, autocomplete, etc.)
| oigursh wrote:
| Embrace, extend, extinguish.
| dsnr wrote:
| Enshittify
| greatgib wrote:
| Some people said: "look microsoft changed, it is not the same
| as before", and "but vscode is open source, what are you
| complaining"...
| Eikon wrote:
| Seems pretty common that a platforms owner would actually try new
| apis with their own stuff.
|
| What better way to get primary real world usage before
| stabilizing?
| spankalee wrote:
| This is the real answer to this. They know they can coordinate
| with the Copilot team to change or remove API usage much
| quicker than third party extensions.
|
| I bet they'd love if there were a way to have trusted testers
| that they could _force_ to make timely updates like they likely
| can with Copilot.
|
| Maybe they should look into Chrome's Origin Trial system and
| make time-limited API tokens so that extension developers know
| that features relying on experimental APIs _will_ break, even
| if the API itself doesn 't. That seems to keep causal usage at
| bay and make sure that trial developers stay on top of things.
| torginus wrote:
| This, there are APIs in Windows today, that were added
| temporarily in one of the early betas of Windows 95 as a
| stopgap measure. By the time MS got around to replacing them
| with proper versions, they found that big applications were
| already using them.
| pzmarzly wrote:
| Huh, I assumed that MS Live Share and GH Copilot extensions were
| already using some secret APIs in the past, since I never saw any
| open source extension being able to do what they do. I guess I
| was wrong before, and this only starts being the case now?
| tristan957 wrote:
| Microsoft VSCode, as far as I know, is not purely what is
| published under https://github.com/microsoft/vscode.
| rty32 wrote:
| Very interestingly, just yesterday I discovered that VSCode has a
| set of APIs for adding SSH tunneling, and under normal
| circumstances you must launch vscode with special flags to be
| able to use them. Somehow their built-in JavaScript debugging
| extension can use these APIs without any issues.
|
| https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/blob/main/src/vscode-dts...
|
| And you can hardly find any public information about these APIs.
| Well, unless someone asks -- As of 2 years ago, they didn't have
| any plans to "finalize" these APIs, i.e. make them public. You
| are advised to find other workarounds (which do work).
|
| https://github.com/microsoft/vscode-discussions/discussions/...
|
| This is much less "harmful" than Copilot though, I guess.
| ghuntley wrote:
| They are private, _for a reason_. I can't expand further. It's
| not less harmful.
| Etheryte wrote:
| I have discovered a truly marvelous reason for them being
| private, which this margin is too narrow to contain [0].
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermat%27s_Last_Theorem#Fer
| mat...
| jdthedisciple wrote:
| I see what you did there (Y)
| bitwize wrote:
| There are just certain technologies my brain says "fuck, no" to.
| GNOME. The Great Banality Laser (whose official name was once
| Twitter). Visual Studio Code.
|
| The fullness of time usually proves my brain's initial
| impressions right, as it seems to be doing now with Visual Studio
| Code.
|
| I can still remember the monthly paroxysm of bliss that radiated
| throughout Hackernews, regular as clockwork, timed with
| Microsoft's monthly VS Code drops. Glad to see it enter its
| trough of disillusionment, at least on Hackernews.
| scotty79 wrote:
| I was with you on the first two. VS Code is the best developer
| experience I had since Delphi and Kate.
|
| I don't care for it being in the news though.
| postalrat wrote:
| Sent from my iPhone
| frenchie4111 wrote:
| Everyone is reading this as intentional anti-competitive
| practices. While that may be true, isn't another reasonable
| explanation that the Copilot development team is moving as fast
| as they can and these sorts of workarounds are being forced
| through in the name of team velocity? It takes a lot more
| time/energy to push public APIs and it's probably a very
| different team than the team developing the copilot extension.
| Seems a bit like a "don't attribute to malice..." kind of moment
| to me
| gavinray wrote:
| Seems like the only sensible comment in this thread so far.
|
| Here's what I imagine it's like working on the Copilot team:
| > Mgmt: "We need this feature, and we need in 2 weeks." >
| Devs: "That feature is not technically possible." > Mgmt:
| "Well, figure out a way to make it possible. That's _your_
| problem."
| rcarmo wrote:
| The few people I know in the Copilot team(s) (not necessarily
| VS Code) are laser focused on prioritizing features based on
| customer demand, not top-down guidance :)
| LudwigNagasena wrote:
| Who decides what customer demands? Is it a free for all
| environment where people just push whatever they want into
| the trunk?
| milkytron wrote:
| Sounds like when Slack started taking marketshare from Skype
| for Business and they pushed out Teams as fast as possible.
| immibis wrote:
| Government: "We fine you two zillion dollars. You should have
| listened to the dev."
| 486sx33 wrote:
| Microsoft: we've just committed to an investment of two
| zillion dollars in co-pilot! Microsoft to investors: don't
| worry, you'll get two zillion dollars of "value" launching
| next week , AND we won't have to pay the bill for years!
| There's even a chance our lawyers will win, and we will
| never have to pay! Microsoft to devs: sorry, we spent two
| zillion on product so your profit sharing is going to take
| a bit hit. Thanks for your hard work!
| Sakos wrote:
| This doesn't fly when you're a company the size of Microsoft
| with the kind of influence and power they have. You can't
| just ignore the possibility or effects of engaging in anti-
| competitive behavior simply because it's convenient for you.
| That's not how it works.
|
| It's not sensible at all.
| solardev wrote:
| Why not? They're survived for decades just shrugging off
| the law and paying off whatever minor fine there is years
| later. They started that model, now embraced by everyone
| from Google to Apple to Uber. Build it fast, get rich,
| worry about legality later.
| MadnessASAP wrote:
| That is exactly the sort of management that has landed many a
| company in hot mater before, _including_ Microsoft.
|
| Whether the managers remain ignorant by malice of
| incompetence is irrelevant. Directing your subordinate to do
| something that they should reasonably know would break the
| law or be anticompetitive is still illegal.
|
| The see no evil defense is a piss poor defense that is more
| likely going to be used to show you knew _exactly_ what was
| going on.
| kburman wrote:
| fork vscode, do whatever you want. merge back when ready.
| ghuntley wrote:
| Won't really help ya. As outlined at
| https://ghuntley.com/fracture/ as soon as you compile
| "VSCode" (MIT) the ecosystem fractures in a bad way (tm)
| including no-license to run majority of MSFT extensions
| (Language LSPs, Copilot, Remote Development). If you are a
| vendor producing a MIT fork then one needs to iterate the
| graph and convince 3rd party extension authors to _not use
| the MSFT extensions_ as dependencies _and_ to publish on
| open-vsx.
|
| This is how Cursor gets wrecked in the medium/long term.
| Coding agent? Cool. You can't use Pylance with it etc. VSCode
| degrades to being notepad.exe. MSFT uses Cursor for product
| research and then rolls out the learnings into Copilot
| because only Copilot supports all of "Visual Studio Code"
| features that users expect (and this is by design)
| kburman wrote:
| If MS didn't owned VS code. What would they be doing?
| DidYaWipe wrote:
| Further enshittifying Windows and Office. I'd say this
| task must have run its course by now, but Microsoft
| always seems to find a way to make products worse.
| timcobb wrote:
| Building VS Code :)
| tristan957 wrote:
| Are other extensions like Codeium[0] allowed to publish under
| the same rules? I'm not saying your comment is incorrect, but
| unless Copilot competitors can get the same treatment, it seems
| extremely unfair and anti-competitive.
|
| [0]:
| https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=Codeium....
| throw4950sh06 wrote:
| They're allowed to fork VSCode and integrate their own
| service. Cursor did that.
|
| VSCode is provided fully free as in beer and freedom. I don't
| see how this is different from Red Hat Linux integrated with
| RHEL services. VSCodium is your CentOS.
| rty32 wrote:
| Exactly. That's what Cursor did, and (I think) Microsoft
| will agree with that and maybe even welcome developers to
| do this.
| throw4950sh06 wrote:
| There's an entire mechanism to build custom VSCode based
| applications right there ready to be used. They did more
| than could be expected.
| tristan957 wrote:
| Has Microsoft allowed Cursor to access the VSCode
| Marketplace? As far as I know, it is against the ToS for
| any editor other than VSCode to access it.
| com2kid wrote:
| I think Cursor just mirrors the VSCode marketplace on
| their own servers. They used to have an ugly work around
| for installing extensions, but now it just works and I
| see links to https://marketplace.cursorapi.com/ inside of
| Cursor's extension browser.
| tristan957 wrote:
| Any idea how they got the data? I would imagine that just
| downloading all the data is also against the ToS.
| ghuntley wrote:
| > I would imagine that just downloading all the data is
| also against the ToS.
|
| It is.
| epolanski wrote:
| I use both vsc and cursor, cursor imported automatically
| all my vsc extensions and settings and theme and
| everything.
| pzmarzly wrote:
| Probably not. Please suggest to extension authors to
| dual-publish their extensions to OpenVSX and
| VSMarketplace. So far all authors I engaged with were
| happy do to so (except for Microsoft of course, who are
| the only benefactor of this wallet garden situation).
| tristan957 wrote:
| I find that many of the extensions I use do dual publish.
| I also dual publish my own extension for people because
| walled gardens are not cool.
| immibis wrote:
| Fortunately most ToS are not legally enforceable, but
| only amount to a public statement of "we are threatening
| to block your IP if you do this"
| tristan957 wrote:
| > VSCode is provided fully free as in beer and freedom
|
| No, VSCode is a proprietary text editor/IDE from Microsoft.
| Code-OSS is provided fully free as in beer and freedom, and
| is currently what resides at
| https://github.com/microsoft/vscode.
|
| Why would Microsoft not want other AI agent extensions to
| get the same benefits, which would benefit all AI agent
| users?
|
| Edit: I have removed the portion of the comment which
| discussed the throwaway account.
| rty32 wrote:
| Does throwaway account negates the arguments though?
| tristan957 wrote:
| I think there can be an inherent bias to the argument
| which should be known, and not hidden away. Nevertheless,
| I removed that portion of the comment.
|
| Either way, no, a fork is not simple because forks cannot
| access the VSCode Marketplace.
| fortenforge wrote:
| Eh not quite. Famously, you can fork VSCode, but you can't
| use the VSCode Extension Marketplace if you do, which loses
| a lot of the network effect benefits of the VSCode
| ecosystem. (As far as I know Cursor is flat out violating
| Microsoft's terms of service with respect to the extension
| marketplace).
| swiftcoder wrote:
| I believe this also blocks you from using Microsoft's
| proprietary language extensions, and they have been
| steadily switching the default language packages from OSS
| to proprietary.
| tristan957 wrote:
| Yes. You famously cannot use the C/C++ language server
| bundled in the C/C++ extension or Pylance. Who knows what
| other development tools they will lock behind their fork
| to the detriment of open source communities. Also you
| can't use their Remote Extension suite.
| ghuntley wrote:
| Correct
| throw4950sh06 wrote:
| OpenVSX. Again this is just the same as RHEL repos behind
| license login.
| tristan957 wrote:
| Red Hat provides support for their packages. If you're
| not paying for support, you don't get access to the
| repos. That makes sense to me. What does Microsoft gain
| by creating a walled garden? They don't provide support.
| All that they provide is hosting. The Eclipse Foundation
| provides hosting for free for OpenVSX, which is an
| amazing service to the community of people using VSCode
| forks that aren't allowed to access the VSCode
| Marketplace. Microsoft should either relax the ToS on the
| Marketplace or acknowledge OpenVSX as the one and only
| marketplace for extensions.
| throwup238 wrote:
| And a lot of the licenses for flagship Microsoft VSCode
| extensions for languages like C/C++ and Python don't
| allow using them outside of VSCode/Extension Marketplace
| so open source forks are crippled by default.
| aithrowawaycomm wrote:
| I would think this is less team velocity and more about
| LSP/etc. I am not an expert on how this is developed, but I
| imagine it will take at least a couple of years for the dust to
| settle to decide on good public API abstractions for LLM
| codegen, and they don't want to introduce anything public that
| they have to maintain in concert with 3rd parties.
|
| That's not to say the general concern about GitHub-VSCode
| smothering competition isn't valid, but I agree that it's
| probably not what's happening here.
| nolok wrote:
| I would maybe entertain that idea in a vacuum, but that's
| Microsoft and they already did that in both Windows and Office
| before so no.
| creata wrote:
| It doesn't matter much whether it's "intentional" or
| "malicious", though. It's still anticompetitive behavior.
| Deukhoofd wrote:
| While I can understand the part about hidden APIs, as they're
| in flux and experimental, the part that's weird about it to me
| is the "you can totally build it and share it just not on our
| marketplace" part. That just sounds to me like they're trying
| to bar their competitors from the VSCode Marketplace, making
| installing and updating a lot harder for users.
| waveBidder wrote:
| Yeah, the fact that they have direct access to VScode _is_
| anti-competitive. It doesn 't require intent, it's baked in to
| the org structure.
| Lramseyer wrote:
| Not malicious, but still selfish. It's important to remember
| that the copilot extensions are an extremely effective way of
| monetizing VScode. So it seems more like they're kind of
| compromising on their API usage rules in order to get to market
| quicker. But allowing themselves to use the APIs before anyone
| else is in a way anti-competitive, because the only way one
| could compete would be to use the unfinished APIs. But that
| requires users to go through more hoops to install your
| extension.
|
| I should also mention that I am a VScode extension developer
| and I'm one of the weirdos that actually takes the time to read
| about API updates. They are putting in a lot of effort in
| developing language model APIs. So it's not like they're
| outright blocking others from their marketplace.
| rcarmo wrote:
| Check my comment elsewhere (it's now bobbing up and down).
| Some things just take time, no need to assume malicious
| intent.
| throwaway19972 wrote:
| > Everyone is reading this as intentional anti-competitive
| practices
|
| Who cares about intention? Anti-competitive behavior is anti-
| competitive behavior.
| timcobb wrote:
| Could be, but definitely worth flagging at the top of HN for
| everyone to see!
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| >Seems a bit like a "don't attribute to malice..."
|
| I'm not saying you are wrong or that the rest of your comment
| isn't pretty valid, but a lot of people attribute malice to
| microsoft out the gate because they have history of operating
| out of malice.
| ctoth wrote:
| So basically the same way XMLHttpRequest was born[0]?
|
| [0]:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20060617163047/http://www.alexho...
| nikeee wrote:
| Also regarding the wording "Proposed API": This seems like it's
| just some kind of incubator for APIs before marking them as
| stable. So that copilot thing may just be their incubator
| project. It may be not though.
| peeters wrote:
| > Everyone is reading this as intentional anti-competitive
| practices. While that may be true, isn't another reasonable
| explanation that the Copilot development team is moving as fast
| as they can and these sorts of workarounds are being forced
| through in the name of team velocity?
|
| Wouldn't another way of saying that be "the Copilot development
| team is leveraging their Microsoft ownership to create products
| in a way not available to the general marketplace?"
|
| The goal might not be to squash competition, but blessing one
| client with special treatment not available to others can still
| be anti-competitive.
|
| Whether that would fall afoul of any regulation is beyond my
| expertise. Naively, most companies have internal APIs that are
| not generally available. But then most companies don't have
| paid public marketplaces on their platform.
| hu3 wrote:
| I agree. Apple has been doing this for years as well.
| canes123456 wrote:
| Is it even not available to competitors? Visual studio is
| open source. Didn't cusor fork it and is building it features
| directly into the fork? Not doing something like this would
| make Copilot at a disadvantage.
| serial_dev wrote:
| But Cursor had to fork, so as a developer wanting to use
| them, you need to give up VS Code and install a new code
| editor, and you can't just install a plugin. Very few can
| maintain a fork and get enough people to use their fork.
| Also what happens if you have two products that needed a
| fork? You can't use them both.
|
| I don't know if it's legal or not, IANAL, but it feels
| definitely anti competitive.
| sshine wrote:
| > _Visual studio is open source_
|
| Sort of. The core is, and the installable binaries with
| telemetry and properietary extensions are not.
|
| The open source, telemetry-free version of VSCode is called
| VSCodium: https://vscodium.com/
|
| > _Didn 't cusor fork it and is building it features
| directly into the fork?_
|
| Yes, in their recent interview with Lex Fridman they argued
| that life as an extension is too limiting.
|
| The main reason we criticise Microsoft for doing this and
| not them is just their size and market dominance.
|
| Why jump through hoops to make competitors better able to
| hotwire their own AI into VSCode, or hotwire Copilot into
| their own IDE, when it's easier to iterate fast and remain
| unpredictable?
| falcor84 wrote:
| > Why jump through hoops to make competitors better able
|
| Because that is the competitive philosophy that allowed
| VS Code win in this space. It fits with that great quote
| from Bill Gates: "A platform is when the economic value
| of everybody that uses it, exceeds the value of the
| company that creates it."
|
| By having VS Code give a priority to another MS/GitHub
| product that they aren't willing to give competitors,
| they're diminishing VS Code's value as a platform, and
| encouraging competitors to build their own IDEs rather
| than building on top of it.
| nar001 wrote:
| You're mistaken, Visual Studio Code is open source not
| Visual Studio, they're different
| gortok wrote:
| > Visual studio is open source.
|
| No it's not. Visual Studio is a proprietary product and the
| latest version is Visual Studio 2022.
|
| Visual Studio Code is open source, and it is about as close
| to Visual Studio as Lightning is to Lightning Bug.
| Arainach wrote:
| Disclaimer: I used to work at Microsoft. These days I work at a
| competitor. All words my own and represent neither entity.
|
| Microsoft has the culture and the technology to tell private
| and public APIs apart and to check code across the company to
| ensure that only public APIs are called. This was required for
| decades as part of the Department of Justice consent decree and
| every single product in the company had scanners to check that
| they weren't using any private APIs (or similar hacks to get
| access to them such as privately searching for symbols in
| Windows DLL files). This was drilled into the heads of
| everyone, including what I assume are 90% of VP+ people
| currently at the company, for a very long time.
|
| For them to do this is a conscious decision to be
| anticompetitive.
| SSLy wrote:
| vscode is developed by VPs borged from github, no? those
| wouldn't know. not that I approve such things, certainly not.
| swyx wrote:
| vscode predated github acquisition by several years
| adolph wrote:
| > vscode is developed by VPs borged from github
|
| Other way around:
|
| _In 2011 [Erich Gamma] joined the Microsoft Visual Studio
| team and leads a development lab in Zurich, Switzerland
| that has developed the "Monaco" suite of components for
| browser-based development, found in products such as Azure
| DevOps Services_ [0]
|
| 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erich_Gamma
|
| 1. https://microsoft.github.io/monaco-editor/
| skissane wrote:
| > Microsoft has the culture and the technology to tell
| private and public APIs apart and to check code across the
| company to ensure that only public APIs are called. This was
| required for decades as part of the Department of Justice
| consent decree and every single product in the company had
| scanners to check that they weren't using any private APIs
| (or similar hacks to get access to them such as privately
| searching for symbols in Windows DLL files).
|
| I thought that only applied to private Windows APIs?
|
| The antitrust case was about the Windows monopoly
| specifically, so other MS products calling Windows private
| APIs was in its scope. But, this is more comparable to
| another MS product calling a private Visual Studio API - I
| don't believe that was in the scope of that antitrust case.
| Did Microsoft have policies and processes against that
| scenario too?
| dchest wrote:
| What a coincidence, I was just browsing Microsoft's Go fork
| (for FIPS compatibility, basically replacing Go crypto with
| OpenSSL and whatever API Windows has, just like there's a
| Google's fork that uses BoringSSL), and found this patch:
|
| https://github.com/microsoft/go/blob/microsoft/main/patches/.
| ..
|
| _Upstream Go tricks Windows into enabling long path support
| by setting an undocumented flag in the PEB. The Microsoft Go
| fork can 't use undocumented APIs, so this commit removes the
| hack._
|
| So, even if they fork something, they have to strictly follow
| this guideline and remove undocumented API usage. I wonder if
| this only applies to Windows APIs though.
| cbhl wrote:
| Frankly if they shipped it with `enabledApiProposals` I'd even
| go further and assume that they actually _intend_ to release
| public APIs once they've baked.
|
| Like, why go through the extra work of gating it under
| `enabledApiProposals` and using the public manifest flag when
| you could put code in VSCode itself that is like "oh if this
| extension is installed let me just run some secret code here in
| the binary".
| nosioptar wrote:
| > Everyone is reading this as intentional anti-competitive
| practices.
|
| I think its fair to assume anticompetitive intent due to their
| history of anticompetitive behavior. Admittedly, in old enough
| to remember the crap they pulled all through the 90s.
| sirspacey wrote:
| Thank you. This needs to be said & should be reported.
|
| If we want a world that isn't massively hostile to devs, like
| it is for most companies, this is the kind of advocacy we need
| and I'd love to see more people in tech putting it out there.
| solardev wrote:
| Embrace.
|
| Extend. <-- We are here.
|
| Extinguish.
|
| Microsoft. Microsoft never changes.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguis...
| jimmaswell wrote:
| where's the embrace step? vscode is their own product in the
| first place.
| solardev wrote:
| So was IE, back in the day, when they first "embraced" the
| web.
|
| Today's "embrace" is of the web dev ecosystem, which before
| VSCode's dominance consisted of Jetbrains, other IDEs, text
| editors, etc.
|
| Now with VScode and Github, they control much of the dev
| ecosystem, shrink competitors' marketshares by making them
| free to end-users (subsidized by other Microsoft
| businesses), expand them with new capabilities (even before
| secret APIs), etc.
| falcor84 wrote:
| Arguably VS Code was their way of "embracing" what GitHub
| were doing with Atom.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Hanlon's razor falls apart when it's used outside of personal
| relationships and in situations where billions of dollars are
| on the line.
|
| There is no functional difference between a Microsoft that's
| really excited about Copilot so that it quickly integrates it
| into their products and a Microsoft that's hellbent on making
| sure Copilot gets to use secret APIs others can't.
| Suppafly wrote:
| >Everyone is reading this as intentional anti-competitive
| practices.
|
| Even if it is anti-competitive, I don't care. Why should VS
| Code have to support alternative AI assistants in their
| software? I understand why people would want that, but I'm not
| sure why microsoft has some sort of ethical or legal burden to
| support it. Plus it's open source, competitors can take it for
| free and add their own co-pilots if they want.
| daedrdev wrote:
| I think you've made a good point here, its not like they
| force you to have vscode. I feel like it wont be super
| popular here thoguh
| colechristensen wrote:
| >Why should VS Code have to support alternative AI assistants
| in their software?
|
| Because of the dominant position of Microsoft in various
| markets.
| throwaway48476 wrote:
| Seems like a false dichotomy. Move fast is just a public
| undocumented unstable API.
| duskwuff wrote:
| > It takes a lot more time/energy to push public APIs
|
| And, once an API is public, it becomes a lot harder to make
| changes to it. Iterating with a private API, then making it
| public once you've figured out the problem space, is a valid
| and useful approach.
| sub7 wrote:
| I had to block all network traffic from VSCode that shit is
| spyware out of the box.
|
| Maybe the vi crew is actually onto something.
| hggigg wrote:
| vi crew here. We had dark mode since before it was fashionable.
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| I am this close to running VSCode inside a VM. The plugins have
| seemingly no sandboxing. Microsoft has repeatedly demonstrated
| they view my analytics as their right. Why should I trust this
| to access my home?
| isatty wrote:
| vi/emacs crew was never wrong. Imagine willingly using a
| Microsoft product.
| rcarmo wrote:
| I started with emacs back in the VT220 days (we didn't have
| tmux/screen in VAXen, nor in Ultrix, and the mail reader was
| great), moved to vim in the Slackware years, and now switch
| between VS Code and nvim on my Mac without any qualms.
| Sometimes I even run nvim inside the VS Code terminal for
| quick edits.
| dmart wrote:
| How dare they add undocumented APIs to a product they pay to
| develop and give away for free.
| rcarmo wrote:
| I honestly don't see the issue here (Full disclosure: I work for
| Microsoft, but in professional services, not in product - and
| nevertheless fully expect to be downvoted to oblivion).
|
| If these aren't finished, that most likely means that they still
| haven't stabilized enough to go through the full support and
| release pipeline--that usually means documenting them, publishing
| a couple of reference development samples, doing a public
| announcement, i.e., the full nine yards of fostering adoption of
| the product feature.
|
| Which you typically will only do once the "preview" is stable and
| flexible enough to pass muster.
|
| I mean, it's not as if there isn't a huge API surface for the
| editor (the sample extensions repo is huge -
| https://github.com/microsoft/vscode-extension-samples), and there
| are already samples out there to extend the Copilot
| functionality: https://github.com/joyceerhl/vscode-mssql-chat (I
| wrote my own based off this one for a personal project)
|
| So maybe consider that those things just take time to build out
| fully before assuming the worst?
| rcarmo wrote:
| Yep, downvoted to oblivion alright. Took all of five minutes,
| and doesn't reflect at all well on radical HN folk's ability to
| empathize with people working hard to ship actual product.
| Sakos wrote:
| You working hard doesn't change the facts. Velocity doesn't
| excuse anti-competitive behavior. I would've thought the DoJ
| case against Microsoft would've taught you that you can't
| just do whatever you want because it's convenient for you,
| especially when it has an effect on your competitors.
|
| This isn't about feelings. This is about a multi-billion
| dollar corporation doing whatever it wants, yet again, to the
| detriment of other players in the market. Empathy doesn't
| have a place here.
|
| It really is tiring to see people who earn hundreds of
| thousands a year crying about a lack of empathy. What a joke.
| rcarmo wrote:
| Why are you making this personal? Do you know me? Do you
| know where I live, or how much I really earn?
|
| (Spoilers: One of the ass-ends of Europe, not that much -
| _certainly_ not anywhere near what my US counterparts earn,
| even "adjusted" to local terms)
|
| Or do you hate Microsoft so much that you think that frees
| you from, you know, having basic human decency?
|
| I suppose you've found this to be great excuse to go on a
| crusade and avoid having a civil discussion with another
| person (and, to be honest, insulting them in the process).
| Bravo.
| prewett wrote:
| Your "HN folk's ability to empathize with people working
| hard" made it personal...
| zb3 wrote:
| This doesn't affect the fact that it's anticompetitive at all.
| MS wouldn't use this argument if that made their extension
| worse, it only works one way.
| gigel82 wrote:
| "Hidden APIs" is clickbait; VS Code is open source. Unless
| they're saying the published VS Code binaries are somehow altered
| to offer the APIs that are not otherwise available in the open
| source repository (which is not the case).
| tristan957 wrote:
| VSCode is not open source. Code-OSS is open source and is what
| is published at https://github.com/microsoft/vscode. VSCode is
| a proprietary application you download from Microsoft that is a
| distribution of Code-OSS with Microsoft branding and presumably
| some proprietary changes.
| wiz21c wrote:
| Microsoft gives a product for free. It is free to add whatever
| features it wants in it. No?
|
| (and that's why I use emacs...)
| troyvit wrote:
| Exactly. I'm not sure why I clicked on this article given that
| [Giant Corp] introducing hidden [Anything] into [Free Product]
| isn't exactly a surprise is it?
| zb3 wrote:
| But we'll be better off if we pressure them not to do that.
| epolanski wrote:
| Plenty of companies thrive on the forks, stackblitz, cursor,
| gitpod and many others.
|
| But you can't expect from Microsoft to also open and share
| every single tool for vsc itself, you're still free to
| implement it though.
| nextworddev wrote:
| Given how Cursor etc built a direct competitor business on top of
| VSCode, understandable
| Jcampuzano2 wrote:
| I really don't get why people are mad about this. I get it,
| people don't like MS but theres really no surprises here, nor is
| it really all that bad. They put time, effort and money into
| developing VSCode. Its open source so if you want to use these
| API's you can in a forked version. And of course if you're
| developing something thats free for everyone to use, and its not
| forcing you to use it, I don't see an issue with using private
| API's.
|
| And while some make the alegory to IE its not the same since its
| not pre-installed on every machine, nor are they forcing you to
| use it. So while yes they have a lot of market share, they have
| nothing stopping you from forking it yourself or just using a
| different editor.
| wincy wrote:
| Because people are concerned that the embrace, extend,
| extinguish of Microsoft will rear its ugly head and we'll all
| have been bamboozled again to use closed source software.
| dirkc wrote:
| People have been bamboozled, but maybe not the way you're
| implying.
|
| Microsoft is only doing open source since it proved to be an
| extremely useful way of doing things, not because they turned
| into an altruistic company that started caring more about
| making the world a better place rather than making money.
| prewett wrote:
| I've not been unable to understand why people trust a
| corporation with 20 years of demonstrable embrace, extend,
| extinguish and other tactics, and with not even a word of
| repentance or even contrition, to not do this again. I think
| we should be _assuming_ it 's in the corporate culture to do
| this again unless they at the very least publicly say they
| intend to do otherwise. (Of course, talk is cheap, but if you
| want to rebuild trust, it's the first step.)
|
| Although I pretty much disagree with their entire design
| value system even on the technical and UI levels (especially
| the latter), and can't see why anyone puts up with Windows.
| But clearly many people do, so obviously I'm missing
| something.
| __float wrote:
| It's unfortunate because there _is_ an existing large ecosystem
| around the official Visual Studio Code product. (The extension
| "store" cannot be used with forks.)
|
| The VS Code team has kept some APIs in this "preview" mode for
| many many years.
| https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/issues/59921 is just one
| example, which has been requested since early 2018!
| p1necone wrote:
| It's felt for a long time to me that MS has been slowly boiling
| the frog with VSCode - injecting little bits of proprietary/non
| open source functionality at a time. I want to switch to
| something else but the community at large for the languages I
| develop in is pretty centered on VS code (Rust and Typescript
| mostly), and it's a _really_ good editor. Obviously not helped by
| Typescript being stewarded by MS too.
| replete wrote:
| VSCodium is VSCode without the Microsoft EULA and extra stuff.
| Most extensions are available in the app, others through
| openvsx.org
| mr90210 wrote:
| Webstorm and RustRover by JetBrains.
|
| I pay for Golang, it took me some time to acknowledge that an
| IDE is slower than a lightweight code editor such as VSCode,
| but it feels great to use a tool entirely crafted for a
| language.
| quyleanh wrote:
| I don't see any problem here. They spend money, effort, time to
| develop their products. Why do they need to give that products
| for free to everyone, or even their competitors?
|
| Others can choose to use or not use vscode. If they concern about
| the telemetry, build themselves or use other code editor then.
| lacker wrote:
| After doing some VS Code extension development, I don't really
| understand what this could enable that isn't already possible.
| You can run arbitrary code on the client side from a VS Code
| extension, you can run a full web application inside the VS Code
| UI, you can read and change developers' files in any way you
| want.
|
| What is Cursor doing that they couldn't do as an extension?
| swyx wrote:
| have you tried their cmd+k and Composer experiences? those are
| new ui paradigms not implementable in extension. native
| integration that "feels" third party is not going to stand out.
| danpalmer wrote:
| What is this Cmd+K / Composer experience? For me Cmd+K is the
| first hotkey in the multi-key bindings that I believe ship by
| default. Searching for Composer just suggests the PHP
| Composer extension that I assume isn't what you mean.
| swyx wrote:
| search cursor composer
| dagaci wrote:
| What dirty, dastardly and deviously, deceptive deceiving and
| clearly damnable practice of Microsoft yet again.
| sporedro wrote:
| Microsoft seems to have most fooled with vscode.. The only other
| IDE's worth touching imo are Jetbrains and they have most likely
| been hit by the fact vscode costs $0 and is "good enough".
|
| Microsoft has already made it difficulty to compete with their
| "free" by giving away enough and locking down parts that would
| allow competition to easily fork it (Python LSP, Extensions
| marketplace).
|
| Vim and Emacs seem to be thriving but I wouldn't call them drop
| in replacements.
| afandian wrote:
| This seems like a good time to mention Zed. Recent discussion:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40928893
| grigio wrote:
| EEE Embrace Extend Extinguish 2024 version
| rvz wrote:
| Extend to Extinguish - Round 3. [0][1]
|
| VS Code + GitHub + OpenAI exclusivity deals + Copilot = The best
| tools available for close to free.
|
| To use the latest features they will only be found on MS branded
| tools like the ones above.
|
| With the competition getting eliminated with total MS coverage of
| the developer ecosystem with almost everyone sitting on GitHub
| using VSCode and OpenAI.
|
| Monopoly with close to no competition all without any regulatory
| scrutiny has been achieved internally. With the extending being
| the extinguish.
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38280513
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34612959
| veblen wrote:
| Has VS Code dominated the code editor market? If not, is this a
| prerequisite for discussing anti-competitive issues?
| epolanski wrote:
| I don't necessarily see anything particularly malicious to be
| honest.
|
| Before you introduce public APIs you need a use case and someone
| to spearhead them and copilot is doing that.
|
| As for Microsoft not allowing installs of stuff like live share
| on other forks I guess it is because they are seen as different
| products and not part of the vsc codebase itself.
|
| I would understand if extension authors would complain about not
| being able to access the same apis (might be the case) but at the
| end of the day they can still fork and do whatever they prefer.
|
| Lots of companies out there thrive on forking vsc, from gitpod,
| stackblitz, cursor and many others. But they can't possibly
| expect to have all proprietary plugins too.
|
| What other code editor has ever been so impactful and open in the
| last decades?
| ekvintroj wrote:
| There are comments questioning whether this is a malicious
| practice or not, I remind you that we are talking about
| Microsoft, they have always taken the 'Embrace, extend, and
| extinguish' approach.
| neilv wrote:
| WordPerfect and Lotus 1-2-3 have entered the chat.
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| I am thinking of uninstalling VSCode and using something else
| because they are too invested in AI.
| naught0 wrote:
| I'll just leave this riiight here
|
| https://github.com/neovim/neovim/wiki/Installing-Neovim/921f...
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| Not sure why this is a problem.
|
| VS Code doesn't have a lock on market share for IDEs the way say
| Google does on search.
|
| There are plenty of other options either with or without CoPilot.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-10-21 23:00 UTC)