[HN Gopher] Positron - A next-generation data science IDE
___________________________________________________________________
Positron - A next-generation data science IDE
Author : amai
Score : 60 points
Date : 2025-07-21 12:59 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (positron.posit.co)
(TXT) w3m dump (positron.posit.co)
| williamstein wrote:
| Not open source: "You may not provide the software to third
| parties as a hosted or managed service, where the service
| provides users with access to any substantial set of the features
| or functionality of the software."
| alterom wrote:
| While this is "based on" the open source codebase of VSCode, it's
| very much unclear from the project page which features and
| dependencies _aren 't_ open source or even free-as-in-beer (..and
| may require a paid subscription, enterprise plan purchase,
| premium account, etc).
|
| I.e., where they are making money off of this.
|
| One clear indication that there _are_ strings attached is that
| they 're bundling a specialized GenAI assistant with the IDE.
|
| Wish it was made clear in the FAQ. It doesn't cover this at all.
| juliasilge wrote:
| Hello! I work on Positron. We outline some answers here:
| https://positron.posit.co/faqs.html#how-can-i-use-positron-w...
|
| tl;dr is that the desktop app (including remote SSH sessions)
| is free to use with a permissive license (no account needed, no
| subscription, commercial use is OK, etc), but using Positron in
| a server mode does require a paid subscription.
| teruakohatu wrote:
| Can it be run through a web browser like VS Code and RStudio?
|
| Why did you relicense it under Elastic License 2.0 from
| VSCode's MIT?
|
| A better alternative would be proprietary extensions under a
| different license like Microsoft does.
| juliasilge wrote:
| Yes, but that is the server mode that is not free to use.
| If you want a free mode that lets you connect to a server,
| you might want to check out the remote SSH support:
| https://positron.posit.co/remote-ssh.html
|
| We talk a bit about why we chose the Elastic license here:
| https://positron.posit.co/licensing.html
|
| We have thought pretty carefully about what kind of
| functionality works well in extensions (in fact, we build
| and maintain a number of extensions!) and came to the
| decision that the more integrated data science experience
| we wanted to make required forking.
| aleph_minus_one wrote:
| Positron is also the name of an ultra-portable 3D printer
|
| > https://www.positron3d.com/
|
| that actually defined its whole new class of ultra-portable 3D
| printers (Positron-style 3D printers; their drive system is named
| "Positron drive").
|
| A sibling of the Positron is the JourneyMaker:
|
| > https://github.com/mcfazio2001/JourneyMaker-Positron
|
| A cost-reduced (no CNC-machined parts) variant of the
| JourneyMaker with a unibody chassis that you can 3D-print by
| yourself is the Lemontron:
|
| > https://lemontron.com/
| ZeroCool2u wrote:
| Kind of unfortunate that it uses pyright and jedi instead of just
| basedpyright for the more advanced features. Python language
| support just isn't great with jedi compared to pylance or
| basedpyright.
|
| And not to beat a dead horse, but I'm also not a huge fan of the
| broad claims around it being OSS when it very clearly has some
| strict limitations.
|
| I've already had to migrate from R Connect Server / Posit Server
| at work, because of the extreme pricing for doing simple things
| like having auth enabled on internal apps.
|
| We found a great alternative that's much better anyways, plus
| made our security folks a lot happier, but it was still a massive
| pain and frustrated users. I've avoided any commercial products
| from Posit since then and this one makes me hesitant especially
| with these blurry lines.
| i000 wrote:
| What is the alternative? Posit princing is absurd. Even
| academia is charged arm and leg - and the value, very
| questionable.
| sieste wrote:
| Positron looks like the next version of Rstudio, which is
| currently free. Do you think the plan is to phase out support
| for the free product and push users into the paid one?
| i000 wrote:
| I am talking about the RStudio Server and Connect - these
| are _really_ expensive. One of the sales reps claimed that
| it is so expensive because they are a PBC and support open-
| source development. As in if they were just for profit it
| would be cheaper, but we should feel good about paying
| more. I could not take it.
| incomplete wrote:
| hard no for me WRT positron... i managed a university's
| jupyterhub deployments for a while and we had faculty CLAMORING
| for this vs. Rstudio.
|
| the problem? the fact that you need a license to use. it's not
| OSS. you are not allowed to deploy this on a hosted/managed
| system:
|
| ``` Limitations
|
| You may not provide the software to third parties as a hosted or
| managed service, where the service provides users with access to
| any substantial set of the features or functionality of the
| software.
|
| You may not move, change, disable, or circumvent the license key
| functionality in the software, and you may not remove or obscure
| any functionality in the software that is protected by the
| license key.
|
| You may not alter, remove, or obscure any licensing, copyright,
| or other notices of the licensor in the software. Any use of the
| licensor's trademarks is subject to applicable law. ```
| sharifhsn wrote:
| Hey, my university is setting up a JupyterHub deployment right
| now, and my coworker is in charge of it. Do you mind
| elaborating more on how you went about it, best practices,
| etc.?
| mirkodrummer wrote:
| Wow can't we escape the vscode fork black hole anymore right?
| n42 wrote:
| "Days Since Last VSCode Fork", when?
|
| this seems unmaintained https://dayssincelastvscodefork.com/
| 90s_dev wrote:
| To be fair, the Monaco team did an amazing thing. It's not
| clear to me just how much of VS Code's complexity is essential
| to its genius, but if anyone ever creates a slim version that
| does 90% of the work in 10% of the code, it would forever
| change editing like VS Code did. It would be great if it was
| portable too, but it's hard to get that without pulling in HTML
| + JS + CSS as dependencies. Maybe as a Dear ImGui extension?
| jmcphers wrote:
| VS Code's complexity is due in large part to its
| extensibility. It has the biggest, most robust extension API
| of any modern editor. Extensions don't get to run on the
| main/UI thread but run in a separate process that
| communicates with the main window over RPCs. This
| necessitates a lot of plumbing and layered generics but makes
| the main UI fast/stable and was a key innovation over other
| editors at the time ( _cough_ Atom _cough_ ).
|
| The API is so good that a lot of core VS Code behavior (e.g.
| Github integration, support for lots of languages) is
| implemented in the form of built-in extensions.
|
| It is possible to get 80% of VS Code's functionality with
| 10-20% of the code if you just bake everything into one
| monolith, but this has been tried repeatedly and it keeps
| failing in part because the extension ecosystem and attendant
| network effects form a wide moat.
|
| (disclaimer - I work on Positron)
| throwaway328 wrote:
| Emacs is the only truly next-generation data science IDE, and the
| last-generation one too.
|
| (Hiding behind my couch after writing that)
| joshmarinacci wrote:
| Is this a rebrand of R-Studio?
| juliasilge wrote:
| I work on Positron, and I would say no, it's a different
| product that has a different set of tradeoffs than RStudio.
| RStudio is a different IDE, and it is not going anywhere; our
| company is committed to long term support for it.
|
| I would say that Positron is better for folks who use more than
| one language (not only R) or want to customize/extend their IDE
| in a way that is not possible in RStudio.
| joshmarinacci wrote:
| Fascinating. Thank you for the quick reply!
| 7thaccount wrote:
| This looks exactly like the Spyder IDE that comes with Anaconda
| and WinPython. You get. Code editor, repl, variable inspector,
| and inline charts. Everything you need.
| juliasilge wrote:
| I work on Positron, and I would say that Spyder can be a great
| choice for someone doing data science who uses Python only. I
| would argue that Positron is a better choice for people who use
| more than one language during their regular work (Python + C,
| Python + Rust, Python + JavaScript, etc) or who want a more
| customizable, extensible IDE.
| binarymax wrote:
| The interesting thing to me is that another company is adopting
| the Elastic license.
| qsort wrote:
| I don't want to dunk too hard on this as it seems to be
| reasonably well made, but how are we making a _data_ science IDE
| without a good SQL client? I might be biased but that 's a major
| part of the workflow. You're already losing against PyCharm or
| Visual Studio (not code, the real one) simply because of that.
|
| I appreciate that full IDEs are heavy tools, but when I just need
| an editor I go with vim, if I have to do real work why not take
| out the power tools?
| notnmeyer wrote:
| it looks like it is based on vsc. there's got to be a decent
| sql client extension, right?
| NeutralForest wrote:
| Then why use this instead of VSCode with a couple extensions?
| qsort wrote:
| You're welcome to suggest one that has 10% of the
| functionality that with PyCharm you take for granted.
|
| Graphical table creator? View and export ER schemas? SQL
| Syntax and autocomplete in .sql files AND within literal
| strings in your code? Query explainer?
|
| Yeah, I don't think so.
| juliasilge wrote:
| I work on Positron, and I do not entirely disagree with you! We
| do have support for managing connections from Python and R:
| https://positron.posit.co/connections-pane.html
|
| But we have some pretty big aspirations around expanding our
| SQL support, based on the features we have already built like
| that Connections pane, our Data Explorer, our Observable
| support via Quarto, etc. We plan to invest in this area over
| the coming months, starting in Q4 this year.
| hatmatrix wrote:
| Can this connect to WSL like VSCode?
| jmcphers wrote:
| Support isn't built-in, but there is a third party extension
| that many folks have used successfully. https://open-
| vsx.org/extension/kv9898/open-remote-wsl
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-07-24 23:00 UTC)