[HN Gopher] OpenVSX, which VSCode forks rely on for extensions, ...
___________________________________________________________________
OpenVSX, which VSCode forks rely on for extensions, down for 24
hours
Author : aaronvg
Score : 237 points
Date : 2025-04-24 17:09 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (status.open-vsx.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (status.open-vsx.org)
| exceptione wrote:
| There is not much to see on a server that is down, so let me
| share some free advice instead.
|
| Visit Eclipse Theia in the mean time when you are serious about
| de-risking from VSCode. I think VSCodium is doing an uphill
| battle here, while Microsoft can't help them self being a sales
| company first. In Theia, everything is open and free of spyware.
| MS is under no obligation to provide an OSS editor, but playing
| tricks after luring people in is not nice.
|
| EDIT:
|
| 1. Eclipse Theia is a different platform than Eclipse the Java
| IDE.
|
| 2. link: https://theia-ide.org/#theiaidedownload
| mdaniel wrote:
| https://theia-ide.org/docs/user_install_vscode_extensions/#c...
| _(sigh)_
|
| > Please note that a few parts of the VS Code extension API are
| only stubbed in Theia. Extensions will be installable, but some
| features might not work as expected.
|
| Also, I thought Theia was a cloud IDE, and it seems like I was
| mostly right in that 2/3rds of their offering is
| (localhost:3000 & docker) but they also now apparently bundle
| it in Electron which I haven't tried
| exceptione wrote:
| Note they say that most extensions are compatible, and those
| not listed as compatible might still be.
|
| The API surface covers almost 100% that of vscode, I only see
| some AI integration API's that are stubbed, and that is
| because Theia has their own vision here and doesn't want to
| depend on MS.
|
| The complete API compatibility list is here, the stubbed
| API's are not core imho:
|
| https://eclipse-theia.github.io/vscode-theia-
| comparator/stat...
| imcritic wrote:
| Why would I switch from vscodium to theia?
| bangaladore wrote:
| Theia is not a fork of vscode (even though it looks like it).
| It uses VSCode's code editor (Monoco) and is written from the
| ground up. Presumably allowing it to support extensions, that
| for example, vscode does not.
|
| However, its early days.
| mappu wrote:
| > However, its early days.
|
| Theia has been out for eight years now,
| bangaladore wrote:
| Came out of beta less then a year ago. What I mean is
| adoption is slow (if even there), so I'm sure there is
| quite a lot missing.
|
| But that's probably fine, Theia seems to be focused more
| on the current audience of Eclipse which is vendor
| tooling (chipmakers, FPGA, custom toolchains) rather than
| being an editor you are supposed to use by itself.
| TiredOfLife wrote:
| Theia is not a fork except all the parts that are.
| bangaladore wrote:
| What parts are forked? Genuinely curious.
|
| Based on my quick reading they are just using Monaco code
| editor. That is 100% freely licensed as MIT. Monaco is
| just the line based text editor.
| imcritic wrote:
| This doesn't answer my question in the slightest. What does
| it offer so nice that vscodium doesn't have and that would
| push me to switch to theia?
| exceptione wrote:
| - Certain core, built-in plugins do still contact MS
| servers.
|
| - Vscode has limited what extensions can do on the
| platform. MS own extensions can do things that others
| cannot.
|
| - Theia extensions can do what oss vscode extensions
| cannot. Theia supports all the non-ms specific extension
| API's so it is fully compatible with all/most vscode
| extensions. But Theia goes further. Part of Theia's
| vision is that you could ship your own Theia, the whole
| platform is open.
|
| So, Theia is a safer bet. There is no rug to pull.
|
| Also, think about chrome <-> chromium. When Google pushes
| for a new API that limits what ad-blockers can do, then
| Chromium has a problem. Because then it becomes a fork,
| as upstream becomes incompatible with chromium.
| dspillett wrote:
| As an outsider to the conversation I'd say it answers it
| vaguely at least.
|
| Perhaps you could ask a question less vague than the
| reply it incited? What is it that you want that keeps you
| with vscodium over other options? Or if you don't have
| enough information/experience of them, just what do you
| like about vscodium enough that you aren't particularly
| feeling any need to consider alternatives?
| bsder wrote:
| > MS is under no obligation to provide an OSS editor, but
| playing tricks after luring people in is not nice.
|
| Microsoft is partly to blame, but people have been warning
| about this over and over and over ad nauseam and people _still
| choose_ to use VSCode. You couldn 't even get people to not use
| the proprietary extensions for C/C++, Python and remote
| development.
|
| The problem is that Microsoft dedicates enough resource to
| development that everybody else looks like a rounding error.
|
| For example, anybody could have produced the Language Server
| Protocol, but nobody had the critical mass until Microsoft
| shoved it down everybody's throats.
|
| Until somebody puts a significant amount of money behind an
| alternative, Microsoft is going to continue to win this battle.
|
| (I was going to also say "or the OSS guys all unify behind a
| choice" but Hell will freeze over before that happens.)
| owebmaster wrote:
| > (I was going to also say "or the OSS guys all unify behind
| a choice" but Hell will freeze over before that happens.)
|
| The editor war is going as strong as ever, emacs vs vim will
| still be here in 20 years. Compared to 10 years ago, the
| amount of people using emacs and vim only grew, although
| VSCode growth was 1000x faster.
| skydhash wrote:
| I was watching the "Simple Made Easy" talk by Rick Hickey,
| and while he was talking more about programming languages,
| the talk could extend easily to editors and other type of
| tooling. People are always going for easy, not simple.
|
| Vim is very simple (a composable language for editing,
| straightforward integration with cli tools, easily
| extendable,...). Emacs is simple (Major mode that dictates
| main operations and display, minor modes for additional
| features, integrations between them can be described more
| as a complex web than a simple graph...).
|
| VS Code is easy (helpful suggestion for plugins, Familiar
| IDE-like interface, default setup, ready to hack on
| projects,...), but scratch that surface and the complexity
| appears (behemoth web engine, settings all over the place,
| app store like marketplace, extension are full blown
| software project,...). All the cons of IDE with none of the
| pros.
| throwy63658 wrote:
| People will opt for what's accessible. Vim requires you
| to learn an alien control scheme to even navigate through
| code, and Emacs requires you to learn an incredibly
| unique programming language -- one that sees no real
| world use, let's be honest -- for basic tasks. Is it any
| surprise, then, that Microsoft had no issue swooping in
| and dominating the editor market when Emacs and Vim users
| believe that these are "features"?
|
| VSCode does a great job keeping the complexity away from
| the user. Vim and Emacs shove it in your face. I prefer
| VSCode's approach.
| genewitch wrote:
| I am not proud to admit that basically the only thing I
| know how to do in vim is edit the network configuration
| so I can install nano - in much the same vein as using
| iexplore.exs to download firefox back in the day.
| teddyh wrote:
| > _Emacs requires you to learn an incredibly unique
| programming language -- one that sees no real world use,
| let 's be honest -- for basic tasks._
|
| Exactly what _basic tasks_ in Emacs requires Emacs Lisp?
| Give me your best /worst example. I can't think of one.
| skydhash wrote:
| Yep. Emacs may be unfamiliar, but almost everything is
| accessible with the mouse and the keyboard. From
| installing packages to configuring the software.
| bsder wrote:
| "Not broken" trumps both simple and easy.
|
| Syntax highlighting on the open source editors was a pile
| of regex fail before VSCode came along and forced
| everybody into the LSP.
| harshitaneja wrote:
| Genuinely curious, how did Microsoft "shoved it down
| everybody's throats"? And weren't Jetbrains, Eclipse, Vim,
| Emacs dominant enough(especially Jetbrains) to have done so
| before Microsoft?
| bsder wrote:
| VSCode garnered such a significant market share that
| supporting VSCode almost immediately becomes your #1 editor
| (see Rust surveys: 2016-3%, 2017-30%, 2018-45%, 2020-54%,
| 2023-62%--note: VSCode was only released in 2016!).
|
| Since the LSP was the only effective way that you could
| support syntax highlighting in VSCode, _languages_ had to
| create an LSP or they didn 't exist to VSCode users. Once
| the language supports VSCode, anyone not already steeped in
| the editor wars switched.
|
| At that point, the editors had to support the LSP or get
| left behind.
|
| With JetBrains, the issue is that they would have almost
| certainly considered an LSP as a competitive advantage. It
| would have taken some amazing foresight to release
| something like that as OSS and not be afraid of losing
| market share if you get vim/neovim to adopt it (you can
| ignore emacs market share--the editor wars are all but over
| and emacs lost badly).
| mdaniel wrote:
| > With JetBrains, the issue is that they would have
| almost certainly considered an LSP as a competitive
| advantage
|
| As a point of comparison, the value that I get from
| JetBrains products is about 35% UX niceties[1] and
| 1500000% code intelligence, which no LSP that I have ever
| seen even strives to do that. They all appear to be
| focused on "jump to declaration", "what can I type here",
| and some of them ferry "linter" results back to the user
| but that is just using LSP as a conduit not that the LSP
| itself is doing anything intelligent
|
| That's why I throw up in my mouth when someone claims
| their vim+lsp is a python powerhouse because, sure, it's
| better than nothing but even PyCharm open source blows
| the doors off of any LSP
|
| 1: and even that has been under constant attack over the
| past few years from their gravely misguided product
| management team, culminating in the "you are committing
| code wrong" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43710699
| j0e1 wrote:
| From my experience having attempted to migrate away from
| VSCodium (in the attempts to de-VSCode) and build atop Theia as
| a platform, there are few things to consider:
|
| - The build system is finicky and can easily take hours to
| figure/fix.
|
| - The error-reporting is severely lacking. You can be lost why
| something internal isn't working and go on a rabbit-trail with
| your favorite AI-copilot, etc.
|
| - Documentation is lacking. You have to dive into the platform
| code to actually figure things out.
|
| - This can be seen positively but there are quite a few new
| things being introduced regularly (especially AI-related)
| which, for a platform, isn't always ideal.
| sergiotapia wrote:
| Why in earth would they stain their efforts with the "eclipse"
| name. Screenshots look great!
| mdaniel wrote:
| I in some sense empathize with you, in that Eclipse have a
| minor branding problem, a major discoverability problem for
| all of their projects of subprojects of projects to track the
| projects. That said, Eclipse the editor was _all in_ on
| building a platform[1] upon which other people could build
| their own editors. It was quite popular before Electron
| arrived and sucked all the oxygen out of the rich text
| delivery space
|
| Eclipse the IDE also sat on their laurels and got their lunch
| eaten by JetBrains on the functionality front and VSCode on
| the extensible platform front
|
| 1: <https://wiki.eclipse.org/Rich_Client_Platform/> or <https
| ://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eclipse_(software)#Rich_client...>
| exceptione wrote:
| I have to somewhat defend Eclipse as the Java platform too.
| Twenty years ago people had hardly any RAM in their machines,
| and Eclipse definitely suffered for that, because without RAM
| you run into lots of disk i/o.
|
| The JRE was born in a time of scarce cpu power and low RAM
| capacities. It has put tremendous optimization pressure on
| the project. I develop on .net nowadays, but I have the
| utmost respect of what they pulled off.
|
| I dare you to install an Eclipse product these days. It will
| run circles around any Electron offering, while offering real
| parsers (not treesitter), and reliable code intelligence
| across vast source projects.
| zdimension wrote:
| > while offering real parsers (not treesitter)
|
| Honest question, what's wrong with treesitters?
| exceptione wrote:
| Very short answer: because a treesitter will do an
| approximately correct parsing, while a hand written
| parser will do a correct parsing (and if not, it is a
| bug).
|
| For a full, balanced overview, see:
| https://blog.jez.io/tree-sitter-limitations/
| blackoil wrote:
| They use vscode extensions and the repository in discussion, so
| not sure how much derisking it is than vscodium .
| 0rzech wrote:
| Each time I try to use Theia IDE I have such a bad experience:
|
| * On each start, Ada & SPARK extension pops up a dialog that I
| have to close by clicking 12 times (I counted it) on its
| "Cancel" button.
|
| * I can't permanently remove items from the left sidebar. It
| looks like Theia is unable to persist some things between runs.
|
| * The IDE notifies me about bad tasks.json config and proposes
| to open it to fix, but the "Open" button doesn't do anything.
|
| * Open VSX extensions do not update automatically. [1] I have
| to manually switch their versions to the newer ones.
|
| * Just now I've manually updated Ada & SPARK extension. Not
| only was I presented with several options with exactly the same
| version (perhaps each was meant for different CPU arch or
| operating system?), but after choosing the first one and
| reloading editor as the IDE asked me to, the extension
| disappeared completely.
|
| None of these happen with VSCodium, or with VS Code of course.
|
| [1] https://github.com/eclipse-theia/theia/issues/9295
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| Remember vs code is designed to fracture and the forks are an
| integral part of that. https://ghuntley.com/fracture/
| ghuntley wrote:
| Thanks for the share. Yeah, building upon VSCode (MIT) is a
| stupid idea. Regarding OpenVSX, it was developed whilst I was
| at Gitpod and transferred to the Eclipse Foundation. It's been
| many years now, so my memory might be a little dated as to what
| came first, but OpenVSX/Gitpod/Thiea/Eclipse origins can all be
| traced back to https://www.typefox.io/.
|
| Anyway. OpenVSX is classic XKCD https://xkcd.com/2347/
| territory--run by a small crew of brilliant volunteers, but the
| entire world depends/freeloads upon them.
| aaronvg wrote:
| it's kind of wild -- none of the multimillion dollar VSCode
| forks (Cursor, windsurf) are working properly at the moment.
| It seems open-vsx is quite a vulnerable single point of
| failure. Searching extensions gives a 503.
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| Is that any different from a GitHub/AWS outage?
| nawgz wrote:
| Yes - no one is making 7 figures in order to keep OpenVSX
| online
| devsda wrote:
| Couple of years ago, I think openvsx faced funding crunch and
| on the verge of the shutdown a dedicated working group was
| formed (including big names like Google, Salesforce etc) to
| support it.
|
| Not sure if this outage and its long duration is due to some
| technical difficulty or an indication of something worse.
| theanonymousone wrote:
| But hasn't Coder.com[0] built a business around exactly that?
|
| [0] https://github.com/coder/code-server
| jeroenhd wrote:
| I fail to see the problem with this, to be honest. Microsoft
| provides a free IDE for everyone to use on any platform, but
| it's not good enough because the language runtimes and
| proprietary third party tools aren't completely free?
|
| Maybe Microsoft should've made VSCode source-available. Sure,
| companies taking Microsoft's free labour would need to develop
| an IDE of their own (or maybe someone can hack Eclipse to work
| as a browser project?), but at least Microsoft wouldn't take
| the heat for not doing enough free work for everyone else.
| esperent wrote:
| > at least Microsoft wouldn't take the heat for not doing
| enough free work for everyone else
|
| You're massively misunderstanding the goals of these large
| companies who provide open source projects, whether it's
| VSCode, Android, Chrome, or whatever. The goal is _always_
| control. Companies at this scale _never_ do free work for the
| common good.
|
| I don't say this to deride them, I say it as a statement of
| fact that we all need to be aware of when we choose to use
| these products.
| rvz wrote:
| Looking forward to the post-mortem of this outage.
|
| #hugops
| joshstrange wrote:
| I'm sure some (many?) will disagree with me but:
|
| VSCode is Android. Or rather, VSCode's source is AOSP and the
| marketplace, plugins, etc are Google Play Services.
|
| I say that with maximum derision.
| 38 wrote:
| as someone who has reversed the Google Play Services API, its
| utterly evil and you are correct that its about as far from
| open source as you can get
| jillyboel wrote:
| Can you please elaborate? Would love to hear more.
| ghuntley wrote:
| you are correct. vscode (mit) is utterly evil - see
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43786380
| amadeuspagel wrote:
| > VSCode is Android
|
| Yes, an open source project that creates immense value, but
| fails to fulfill some purist fantasy.
| dizhn wrote:
| Like have a working keyboard?
| JLCarveth wrote:
| My android phone doesn't have a working keyboard?
| 3np wrote:
| You use stock Android Open Source keyboard, not closed-
| sourced Gboard? Can you type in Chinese?
| blackoil wrote:
| China doesn't uses Google services. Am sure they can type
| in Chinese.
| jhanschoo wrote:
| Those Android phones are loaded with their manufacturer's
| Chinese IME, not a completely open-source one.
| numpad0 wrote:
| CJK languages need language-specific AI conversion
| engines for any kind of typing. Which OSS versions exist
| for Japanese, I don't know for Chineses(CN/HK/TW - IIUC
| they're slightly divergent beyond fonts).
| charcircuit wrote:
| Components that are not used, that almost always get
| replaced by vendors do not get much love. That the base
| AOSP should be optimized to use out of the box is a purist
| fantasy. In reality AOSP is made with the understanding
| that vendors are going to customize it. A lot of Android is
| designed to be modular, you can easily install a different
| keyboard app.
| throwup238 wrote:
| _> Yes, an open source project that creates immense value,
| but fails to fulfill some purist fantasy._
|
| Yes, a purist fantasy of an open source project that
| functions without closed source proprietary blobs.
|
| Oh, the horror! Won't somebody think of the children!?
| goku12 wrote:
| I would immediately jump ship if I could buy a phone that
| supports a truly free OS. Instead, I'm stuck with an option
| between a reasonably-secure, but completely locked-down phone
| (both hardware and software) with an exorbitant life-long
| cost and semi-locked-down phones with a pseudo-FOSS OS, whose
| main business is to my leak personal data for a dozen
| companies. Honestly, the only reason why Android (and iOS)
| reign unchallenged is because of their iron grip over the
| hardware ecosystem.
| teddyh wrote:
| > _I would immediately jump ship if I could buy a phone
| that supports a truly free OS._
|
| Is your definition of "Phone" equivalent to "must run apps
| (non-emulated) for iPhone and/or Android"? Otherwise, I
| mean, these things _do_ exist:
| <https://puri.sm/products/librem-5/>
| tuyiown wrote:
| I've yet to see any immense success based on the open source
| part of android.
|
| Its value and main goal is to suffocate any initiative on
| mobile space, call it immense if you will, but I concede it
| certainly works.
| genewitch wrote:
| We can't possibly be Anti-competitive! We give it away for
| free! "
| lenerdenator wrote:
| I mean, it's Microsoft. We all knew that to an extent going in.
|
| Google, on the other hand, pretended to be the FOSS crusader
| while setting themselves up for a ton of vendor lock-in that
| would not only have gotten 90s MS convicted on antitrust, but
| Bill Gates crucified on the National Mall.
| ohgr wrote:
| A good analogy. I always felt a little dirty using VScode. Back
| to tmux, vim a few months back like it has been for the last 20
| odd years.
| cdelsolar wrote:
| How do you run Cline on it
| ohgr wrote:
| I don't use any AI agents to write code. I spend most of my
| time undoing shit shows left by people who do.
| eMPee584 wrote:
| codium (now windsurf?) has a vim plugin : )
| owebmaster wrote:
| Codeium changed names to windsurf, Codium is still the
| same
| lowbloodsugar wrote:
| Maybe I'm just old, but I find it so strange that you have to
| compare something from Microsoft to something _else_ to
| indicate how evil it is. It 's Microsoft.
| fr4nkr wrote:
| I noticed this the other day when I installed VSCodium on my new
| Windows box. I had a functional setup for _one day_ , then the
| next day I couldn't install a language extension I direly needed.
|
| It's left a very sour taste in my mouth. I've used Emacs for ages
| and despite being a much more niche editor, it's never been so
| hard-dependent on centralized repositories, and the centralized
| repositories it does have (ELPA/MELPA) are apparently a lot more
| reliable than OpenVSX. Installing Emacs packages manually from
| source is a breeze, doing so with VSC is masochistic.
|
| VSC is not really "open source" in any meaningful sense. It is
| just plainly unusable if you don't do things the way Microsoft
| wants you to. I do respect the VSCodium devs for trying to make
| VSC more properly open, but it does feel like a futile effort.
| bogwog wrote:
| For context, Open VSX is run by the Eclipse foundation, which
| also develops the Eclipse Theia editor, which is basically a
| clone of VS Code (not a fork, like VS Codium).
|
| The Open VSX registry is open source
| (https://github.com/eclipse/openvsx) and self-hostable,
| although I have no experience with that. I assume it's possible
| to host your own instance with the extensions you want instead
| of relying on the free public instance.
|
| Personally I'm more of a Sublime guy, but people looking for an
| open VSC alternative should consider Theia over VSC forks. It
| seems like the smarter long term investment if you want to get
| out from Microsoft's control.
| bobajeff wrote:
| Even though I've heard of Theia Editor before I don't think
| I've ever seriously looked at it until now. It honestly looks
| like a good alternative to vscode. (It basically looks like a
| straight up clone, which is good for me) I'll definitely give
| it a try.
| TiredOfLife wrote:
| Theia is based on Microsoft Monaco editor. Its a fork with a
| different ui
| Macha wrote:
| I think if it was a distro like VSCodium, you could call it
| a fork. But Monaco is a small piece of VS Code. It's a text
| widget. A _nice_ text widget, but you can play with bare
| Monaco here:
|
| https://microsoft.github.io/monaco-editor/playground.html
|
| You could shove this widget alone into electron and call
| the result a text editor, and I mean, Notepad was basically
| this for the windows text entry component for years, but
| it's a long way away from VS Code, or from Theia.
| eddythompson80 wrote:
| I feel that you're conflating few concepts, hackability, "open
| source", single point of failure architectures.
|
| Yes, VSC is less hackable than emacs, but I don't think it's
| necessarily the same thing. VSC (and others like it) are going
| for a more streamlined "App Store" experience, while emacs is
| going for a more DIY/hackable style editor. You can always
| fetching the VSIX file and sideload it is if the "store" is
| down though.
|
| Yes, VSC is less "open source" than emacs. if "open sourceness"
| is a score out of 10 or something. Pretty sure RMS would argue
| linux is less "open source" than emacs too.
|
| Not sure why this is futile for the VSCodium devs. They are
| taking a dependency on a service for installing extensions. The
| solutions is more readonly mirrors for the official OpenVSX
| endpoint.
|
| If your main archlinux mirror is down, you don't cry about the
| centralized state of our life. You use a different mirror. You
| throw in 5 or 10 in case one or two are down. I understand why
| a company like Microsoft might want a more centralized service
| to distribute the extensions. But for an open source clone? is
| Microsoft also expected to create the mirror clone?
| teruakohatu wrote:
| > 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.
| Macha wrote:
| 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.
| pdntspa wrote:
| Not even a policy change, you update one file in AppData
| and you're in.
| fr4nkr wrote:
| 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.
| mrlongroots wrote:
| 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.
| bayindirh wrote:
| 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.
| watusername wrote:
| 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.
| cortesoft wrote:
| > 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.
| throwup238 wrote:
| 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.
| jhanschoo wrote:
| 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.
| miohtama wrote:
| 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.
| filmgirlcw wrote:
| 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/
| throwup238 wrote:
| _> 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.
| pdntspa wrote:
| It's very easy to point VSCodium at the official MS
| extension marketplace. Everything works.
| goku12 wrote:
| > 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.
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| Speaking of, 4 freedoms might not be enough any more :
|
| https://elevenfreedoms.org/
| Zambyte wrote:
| 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.
| fhcbix wrote:
| 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.
| int_19h wrote:
| 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.
| wilsonnb3 wrote:
| 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.
| neonsunset wrote:
| Roslyn language server is OSS too: https://github.com/dot
| net/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)
| amarshall wrote:
| > 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/Micro
| soft...
| johnnyjeans wrote:
| violating a corporation's terms of service isn't unlawful.
| outside of that corporation, at least.
| cmeacham98 wrote:
| It is not criminal, but it is unlawful.
| mystified5016 wrote:
| 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.
| cmeacham98 wrote:
| Honestly incredible this level of misinformation is
| getting posted on HN: https://www.google.com/search?chann
| el=fs&q=are+eula+legally+...
| prmoustache wrote:
| 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.
| cmeacham98 wrote:
| 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.
| 999900000999 wrote:
| You can always clone the extensions repo and build locally.
| Should take 10 minutes at most
|
| I'm not sure how this could actually work without a centralized
| repo.
|
| If I'm going to use VSCode I'll just use it, I don't need to
| play with forks, etc
| veidr wrote:
| It's plenty open source -- that is why all these forks exist!
|
| VS Code itself does not work without various propriety stuff,
| but that is a different thing. A large number of open-source
| projects work that way. If you don't like the proprietary
| stuff, the recourse is to fork it, modify it, and implement the
| remaining stuff yourself.
| ezst wrote:
| https://ghuntley.com/fracture/ ; I'll just leave this here.
| veidr wrote:
| Yeah, I know all about that stuff. But nevertheless, you
| _can_ fork it.
|
| Is it the most awesome, selfless, altruistic version of
| open source? Clearly not.
|
| But is it better than being proprietary closed-source
| software? Well, that's a value judgement, so we can each
| decide that for ourselves. Personally, I think so, but
| maybe it depends. Regardless, though, it's open source, and
| if it weren't the software landscape would look very
| different.
|
| Cursor, Windsurf, etc. would presumably not be as far along
| as they are, because they'd have to invest in basic editor
| functionality. Among many other projects, both open-source
| and otherwise.
| tiahura wrote:
| Pointless was my thought after initially installing it years
| ago. Ok, I'm installing this open source "clean" version, just
| to install a bunch of MS proprietary spyware extensions? Why
| not just use the real thing?
| Hasnep wrote:
| Nowadays there are good alternatives to some of the
| proprietary Microsoft extensions, I use the basedpyright
| extension on VSCodium and prefer it to Microsoft's
| proprietary Pylance. I've also heard good things about the
| clangd extension as an alternative to the C/C++ extension.
| theanonymousone wrote:
| I have a failing CI/CD pipeline. I use a reproducible
| development setup based on Coder.com's Code Server..
| blackoil wrote:
| The model is called Open Core, so is well understood so I am
| not sure what is causing this confusion. The editor is open
| source as evident from a dozen forks. The complete experience
| which includes extensions has closed source pieces which the
| forks won't access to. But OSS community can build replacement
| or other companies can provide alternatives.
|
| Just because pylance is available doesn't stop
| jetbrains/Google/OSS from creating an LS. Maybe no such exists
| as if now, but not from a technical blocker. Just no one
| created one.
| arccy wrote:
| Microsoft has never been pro open source, yet so many devs fell
| for their marketing lies.
| genewitch wrote:
| Walmart used to claim they supported US businesses. A lot of
| people remember the ads and the native ads, especially in
| southern California when Wal-Mart was trying to make inroads
| there in the late 90s.
|
| Walmart. Bringing back home. (tm)
|
| The CEO even said the quiet part out loud in one of the
| commercials in the early 90s, roughly "we'll buy American
| products, unless they're lesser quality or more expensive"
| and trailed off, and the editors back then weren't as tuned
| in to corpo-speak or something.
|
| Of course the countries with more lax environmental
| regulations and worker protections will have a cheaper
| product; the entire thing was a sham from the beginning.
| wilsonnb3 wrote:
| Microsoft _is_ pro open source, it 's just that they use it
| as a means rather than an end which trips up a lot of people
| who view open source differently.
|
| Its a tool they use to encourage adoption of their developer
| tools and get people to spend more money in Azure, not a
| philosophical stance.
| throwaway42167 wrote:
| Worth noting that you can configure VSCodium to use Microsoft's
| extension repo, and you can even trick extensions into thinking
| VSCodium is VSCode. It just can't be distributed that way out of
| the box for legal reasons.
| falcor84 wrote:
| Thanks, haven't tried it yet, but just found the relevant
| configuration settings described in the docs [0] and more
| detail on Stack Overflow [1].
|
| [0]
| https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium/blob/master/prepare_vsc...
|
| [1] https://stackoverflow.com/questions/44057402/using-
| extension...
| gchamonlive wrote:
| Now it's as good a time as ever to try out Lazy Vim. Came to it
| from Lunar Vim and it just works.
|
| Working with anything is a breeze.
|
| I'm just not too familiar with refactoring tooling and how to
| configure it, but there's rarely any reason for me to use
| something more complicated than sed, and in those occasions I can
| just use ast-grep.
| shiandow wrote:
| Trying out emacs again after vsvode broke remote ssh for no
| apparent reason (other than their _insane_ decision to install
| the whole text editor remotely). Tramps in emacs has some
| quirks (need to make connection timeouts faster somehow) but it
| just works.
| gchamonlive wrote:
| What I find nice about these terminal IDE's is that I can
| just deploy my config to my servers I access over ssh and
| it's the same experience as locally
| Havoc wrote:
| This is why I've been learning neovim for the past couple weeks -
| the vscode reliance on Remote SSH extension felt like lock in
| NoboruWataya wrote:
| Do you have a particular configuration or set of extensions
| you've been looking at? I mostly use JetBrains IDEs but have
| been trying to get a decent neovim setup as well. I followed
| some random tutorial and eventually got a decent setup working
| but it feels fragile and I'm not sure I could reproduce it if I
| had to. I am looking at AstroNvim now as a potentially more
| stable/reproducible setup.
| skydhash wrote:
| With editors like vim, neovim, emacs, it's way easier to get
| the lay of the land first (tutorial, play around with the
| default config,..) and then list out what you need.
|
| My vim config has three things only: LSP, FZF (for anything
| fuzzy), and Plug (to install the above two). There's also a
| few niceties, but I could do without them. or vendor them
| into the main config. But it's not my daily editor, so that's
| just the base config. Anything I could add on top of that
| would depend on the projects I would need it for. That's
| about 200 lines (the lsp config is 1/4 of that)
|
| NB. A nice talk even if it's about vim "How to Do 90% of What
| Plugins Do (With Just Vim)"
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XA2WjJbmmoM
| c-hendricks wrote:
| There are a couple of options for Remote SSH with neovim:
|
| - https://github.com/chipsenkbeil/distant.nvim
|
| - https://github.com/mikew/nvrh
| Spunkie wrote:
| I'm partial to running Code - OSS and patching it with the
| aur/code-features and aur/code-marketplace.
| john-h-k wrote:
| Lots of vim/emacs mentions so I feel obliged to mention Helix
| (https://helix-editor.com/). Used neovim for _years_, tried Helix
| for a few weeks and never looked back
| notnmeyer wrote:
| helix is so excellent.
| dodos wrote:
| I love helix, I just wish more editors had support for its
| bindings so I'm not as out of water when I have to use an IDE.
| rockyj wrote:
| Really interested. Can you recommend a good tutorial, I tried
| searching but could not find anything which looked promising.
| myaccountonhn wrote:
| And Kakoune, if you're looking for something you can easily
| extend yourself.
| rnd0 wrote:
| Basically we've seen this movie before -look at the trajectory
| OSX took. As far as I know, it's not really possible to build a
| useable pure darwin installable OS. Puredarwin itself is stuck in
| whatever was released in 2018 or earlier.
|
| Like Darwin, there may be an 'open' skeleton that vscode hangs
| upon, but all of the things that make it useful and attractive
| are being increasingly pulled behind paywalls.
|
| I'm pretty sure most of us saw this coming a mile away. I've
| played a little with VS Code here and there but never put a lot
| of time into it because I'd rather invest my time in things I
| know will be here in 2035 -like vim/neovim.
| khimaros wrote:
| https://github.com/lapce/lapce is an interesting contender in
| this space
| mdaniel wrote:
| I happened to be poking around in their issues to see if there
| were mirrors and observed that in addition to the linked status
| page on this thread, the underlying Eclipse Foundation has their
| own (multiple) status tracking channels
|
| most relevant:
| https://www.eclipsestatus.io/incident/549796?mp=true
|
| their helpdesk ticket:
| https://gitlab.eclipse.org/eclipsefdn/helpdesk/-/issues/5924...
|
| the issue in their GitHub issue tracking for the site:
| https://github.com/EclipseFdn/open-vsx.org/issues/3805
|
| the tl;dr seems to be a massive storage failure affecting a bunch
| of Eclipse services, and just like any storage problem putting
| all the bytes back is some "please wait"
| Dwedit wrote:
| Yeah, the problem with centralized hosting is that the host can
| go down. Something like IPFS/IPNS could act as a decentralized
| backup plan.
| jononor wrote:
| What are good, open source, alternatives to VS Code? That are
| modern IDEs with decent support for frontend, backend, data
| science, and embedded (possibly via extensions)? That mostly work
| out of the box, without having to set up and configure NN things.
| Matumio wrote:
| They don't exist. If you want out-of-the-box, use Jetbrains and
| pay for it. If you want free-as-in-beer, VSCode proper. For
| free-as-in-speech you'll spend hours to learn/configure
| neovim/helix/emacs, or even hunting down free VSCodium plugins,
| I guess.
|
| I think working on out-of-the-box experience is not very
| attractive for volunteer contributors, so I guess the situation
| won't change unless we find a way to sponsor that work.
| dharmab wrote:
| Zed is close, keep an eye on it when 1.0 comes out, probably
| later this year.
| zoobab wrote:
| Use Torrent, not HTTP.
| thomond wrote:
| Surely you can download the extension from a mirror and install
| it manually(ie the "old fashioned way")?
| mrWiz wrote:
| Not legally.
| jamisonbryant wrote:
| This right on the heels of the GitLab 17.11 release announcement
| [0] which mentioned that they added OpenVSX support to their Web
| IDE. One of the biggest blockers for my team to use the Web
| IDE/GitLab's equivalent of "Codespaces" was the lack of
| extensions support.
|
| As developers, we're spoiled for widespread (e.g.) vim
| keybindings support in just about any IDE via extensions. When
| unable to use it in something like Web IDE, it is very
| frustrating and makes it less useful as a product.
|
| [0]:
| https://about.gitlab.com/releases/2025/04/17/gitlab-17-11-re...
| mdaniel wrote:
| If I didn't hate GitLab's gitlab-org/gitlab issue tracker so
| much I'd go look to see if them offering OpenVSX _registry_ was
| on the roadmap, because then an organization could mirror the
| .vsix into their GitLab instance and not suffer outages (in
| addition to the supply chain safety aspects)
|
| Also, I wonder how hard it would be to teach VSCodium/Theia to
| pull extensions from OCI because it seems to work great as a
| distribution mechanism for Homebrew and allows shipping a .vsix
| from your own GitHub/GitLab account, since both of those offer
| no-cost OCI image registries scoped to the project
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| Open Source projects used to all be hosted on hundreds of random
| mirrors. The hosting of which was free and donated, because it
| was just an HTTP/FTP/RSYNC directory on a file server in a closet
| in some corporation or university. Didn't even need to be
| reliable, as there were hundreds of mirrors. Linux distributions,
| and some very old projects, are still maintained this way.
|
| Nowadays you _must_ have a flashy website. You _must_ host
| everything on a single managed VCS provider, or a programming
| package ecosystem hoster. You _must_ depend on corporations to
| give you free things, in exchange for you giving them everything
| about you (otherwise you _must_ pay out of pocket for
| everything). You _must_ do what everyone else does.
|
| Maybe it's impossible to go back to a simpler time. But it's not
| impossible to change the state of things today.
| hiatus wrote:
| > Nowadays you must have a flashy website. You must host
| everything on a single managed VCS provider, or a programming
| package ecosystem hoster. You must depend on corporations to
| give you free things, in exchange for you giving them
| everything about you (otherwise you must pay out of pocket for
| everything). You must do what everyone else does.
|
| You keep saying _must_. Why _must_ you do what everyone else
| does? To what end? To get contributors to your project? To get
| funding? No one is stopping anyone from starting a project on
| sourceforge.
| marpstar wrote:
| I think GP was speaking tongue-in-cheek about the situation.
| campbel wrote:
| This is the difference between open source to share useful code
| and open source to build leverage for a business.
| wejick wrote:
| Dozens of AI powered IDE forked from VSCode impacted. Now is the
| right time for better managed openVSX, more collaborative
| efforts.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-04-25 23:01 UTC)