Most of us hate Microsoft, and yet many of us use VSCode

flashgnash@lemm.ee to Linux@lemmy.ml – 393 points –

I get that it's open source provided you use codium not code but I still find that interesting

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This reminds me of when my dad holds an ideological belief about something based on politicians he doesn't like who support it.

"Climate change isn't real because Al Gore..."

"Supply Side Jesus isn't valid because Al Franken..."

"Affirmative Action is racist because Al Sharpton..."

Actually now that I think about it, maybe he just doesn't like people named Al...🤔

But anyway, if it's open source, and the source is sufficiently audited by third parties, and I'm able to compile and run it myself, and running it doesn't have undesired behavior (telemetry etc) then I don't care who wrote it, because it does exactly what I need it to.

Unfortunately VSCode is not an open-source product, it's only based on an open-source product. It's the difference between Chrome and Chromium. VSCode does have telemetry. VSCode is licensed under Microsoft's proprietary license.

So I suspect you don't use any extensions or found a way not to get them from Microsoft?

I don't use vscode, I was just explaining that my requirements for using an open source product for my personal uses are independent of who wrote the code. I'm never going to say "I won't use X source code just because Y wrote it", that's just silly. If I have the code, and it does what I would want it to do if I wrote it myself, and it doesn't do anything I don't want it to do, then I don't care where it came from.

Lately I've been using Neovim.

Yes, and I was adding that it is not enough for the product to be open source if the ecosystem surrounding it (e.g. extensions) still drives you to use proprietary software

You're right, it's not open source if it's not open source. Good point.