Visual Studio Code (and ecosystem) isn’t opensource and closed by design not because of copilot. It’s to enable a wider plan involving GitHub codespaces aka Visual Studio Online (do a nslookup of the cname on a codespaces workspace btw) - see https://ghuntley.com/fracture
Indeed a by product of the design ensures that Copilot does not work on oss (vscode mit) which other cloud development vendors which compete that codespaces uses but the problem is much wider.
For example dotnet tooling, pylance, etc. Most of the popular programming languages where microsoft is the primary maintainer of lsp/editor tooling by design is not open.
Wow, shame on me for not being as anti-corporate as my soul wants to be. I was really hoping they'd keep a clean Chromium model, even maybe with some closed extensions, but that is pretty awful.
Like, bad enough I might actually start casting side-eye on VSCode (rather than Codium) use. That just smells like they want all coding+copiloting done in an environment where they can watch every keystroke, "borrowing" your code from the second it leaves your fingers, through the editor, through GitHub, through Actions and Deployment. If it weren't for Copilot, I'm not sure I'd care but. Ew.
Thanks for continuing to talk about it, and sorry if you have hard feelings about the whole thing :(.
A lot of conspiracy talk here, backed up with nothing other than a note that the AI chat API isn't public yet.
I'd argue that MS has been on a very different trajectory since the "Linux is a cancer" Ballmer days, and open source is a big part of that movement. I never thought I'd see them buy and open source Xamarin, or open source the entire C# compiler and .NET Framework. It's worked well for them - .NET is being actively developed by many volunteers as well as the core MS team, and performance has improved significantly in the last few years. There are a lot of associated technologies being developed in the open, too, like Terminal, the C# language itself and so on. I find it difficult to think that this was all a grand plan to extract more revenue out of devs. Rather, I think MS realised that it was instead a "rising tide lifts all boats" situation, whereby bringing more devs into the fold - including those on Linux and Mac - would be mutually beneficial. Let's not forget, Visual Studio Community Edition wasn't around until relatively recently. The only legal way to get Visual Studio was to fork out for a Pro or Enterprise licence.
As for AI integration into VS Code, I share kaelini's opinion that the chat feature is still new and possibly very alpha (it's certainly not very fast at the moment), so that's probably why it's not all been open sourced. But, of course, MS is perfectly within their rights to release closed-source extensions to the VS Code marketplace - the new C# Dev Kit is a case in point here.
> What does Microsoft really get? Maybe in the beginning, telemetry was the real answer, from whichever developers didn’t opt out.
This is beside the main point of the article, but: as a developer, it's true telemetry is critical for building a good product. Knowing which parts of your app are underutilized or need improvement is extremely important - without hard data, you're basing your project on a hunch. However, telemetry is worth zero in and of itself.
If the article author thinks Microsoft is magically turning their VSCode latency data and error stacktraces into metric tons of cash money, they're probably mistaken.
I remember in 2014 they did a Linux developer survey, and I was a part of it. In it, I suggested porting over Visual Studio to Linux. Apparently the right person read this and so then we had a follow-up meeting with three other developers, and we spoke more about the idea. I think they sent me a $25 starbucks gift card.
They did not, Microsoft made the bet that there would be some application in the future that would require distribution to all developers. Turns out that application was Github Copilot.
Some application in the future, that turns out to be AI? That is some level of hammering a square into a circle as I see it (confirmation bias?).
This quickly falls apart, since GitHub Copilot is also available as an extension on intelliJ, and is not exclusive to VsCode.
Vscode shines with or without GitHub Copilot, because it also has some other exclusive extension ecosystem that are not opensource but very much a bait to pull Linux devs into windows, their bet on WSL, and exclusive extensions like WSL integration and remote containers extension, literally shows how much they want developers to be in their ecosystem.
Vscode is their, bet itself to keep developers wrapped in their tentacles, OTOH Copilot is barely a feature, that allows them to charge subscribers, on multiple IDEs. Copilot is not an exclusive feature that brings devs into their ecosystem, it's just an addition.
I mean they already have published many plugins linked to azure and other services they offer it's not about copilot but they did strike gold with copilot.
The article even says that they stumbled into this more or less accidentally, but I guess the author didn't want to give up such a great clickbaity title.
> What does Microsoft really get? Maybe in the beginning, telemetry was the real answer, from whichever developers didn’t opt out. But it turns out even Microsoft didn’t see the answer coming.
> Without knowing it, Microsoft built VSCode for GitHub Copilot.
I really hate articles that bait and switch the premise on you, so I stopped there. The thrust of the title and the introductory text seems to indicate that the author has discovered another undisclosed reason for building VS Code.
I'm pretty sure they just looked at where developers spend their time and invested everywhere they could. They want to own the development experience. Microsoft built VSCode before OpenAI or the transformers paper even existed. It seems clear that the motive was detached from any kind of overly specific AI product direction.
EDIT: The article doesn't actually contend what the title suggests it does. So nevermind I guess.
VSCode is painful to use. I don’t get why, when I do a “search for references” that my previous “search for references” tab gets destroyed.
Also, when I open a file from “search for references” results, the newly opened file does not appear in my recently-opened list. So I can’t switch back and forth to it.
I don't know what could be other scoop on it, but VS Code was John Papa's initiative (in his own words). He did a podcast on it as well; checkout it out at DotNetRocks.com
We have been here before and probably will again. Companies are not for or against OSS, it's just a tool for maximizing whatever their mission are. And that includes codeium too. Right now, it is in codeium interest to push for OSS so they do so, and MSFT to try to protect github copilot advantage so they do so.
Give it a couple of years and codeium will be doing the same game (is they survive that long), same as reddit, stack overflow etc... etc...
As for msft, it's the classic case of company short sightedness here : msft has been slowly building a good reputation around OSS which foster trust and adoption by the wider community. And they are trading all of this good will for a market which is not even mature yet.
I'm pretty sure the real reason Microsoft released VSCode is because they had already written a lot of the code for their online text editor widget and needed a Linux/Mac editor to increase C# and especially typescript popularity
The C# support in VSCode is kinda piss poor unless it's changed significantly in recent months. Last time I used it to try to work on a small project I ended up abandoning it and using Visual Studio proper. I wanted it to work out, but it just didn't work good.
C# support in VSCode is fine at the moment; I sometimes use it for quick scratch-code experiments. The OmniSharp-powered extension which provides basic support is under constant development, so things may have improved since you last used it. Microsoft have also added a closed-source extension recently which provides Visual Studio-like extra features on top, like Solution Explorer, better Test integration etc.; that's free for individuals and small teams but you need a Visual Studio Subscription if you want to use it in large teams or if you're making >$1M per annum:
The author is trying to pull the wool over his readers' eyes. This is NOT the main landing page for either VSCode or VisualStudio. Those are https://code.visualstudio.com/ and https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/vs/, respectively. Copilot doesn't make any sort of appearance on either page.
Microsoft is the devil. I'm sorry, but from "the beginning of time" that company has sought nothing but a complete monopoly.
How could the github guy sell that platform to M$!
On their LinkedIn platform they force C# jobs on you instead of, in my case, Go, what I searched for.
You search for Go, you get C# results, if you're logged in.
Why am I being so dramatic, because it has been going on since day 1.
TCPA, now TPM, forced on you if you want to use their latest OS.
Their browser sending images you view to them.
Telemetry, who knows what kind, that you can't turn off.
Copilot that steals other people work they published in good faith.
And they have their hands everywhere.
Aren't you tired of this kind of unreality, dystopia tbh.
I am. I'm tired of not just Microsoft spying and abusing me but also Google and most of all the 3 letter word agencies in the US.
Just an hour ago I was locked out of Github because they're forcing 2FA on me.
Screw them. I'd rather not have a Github account than being forced to do 2FA.
I've been on the net since 1995, not a single hacked account.
I'm just fucking done.
Microsoft is my new #1 enemy, again.
Nobody forces you to use Microsoft products. Also, Microsoft is a large group of people with different motivations, personalities, and incentives. Sometimes the “good” people win the internal political battles, and sometimes the “bad” people win. Exactly like OSS. There are examples of evil sociopathic people involved in OSS, and plenty of political battles, oversized egos etc. However that doesn’t mean than all of OSS is evil. Same with Microsoft.
"In-editor chat" is mentioned as an example (the only example in the post, as far as I can tell) of a restricted API feature. Since the post insinuates that the restricted APIs are done out of malice/with anticompetitive intent, I think we'd need to see an example of the vscode devs being asked for access to this "in-editor chat" API and know how they reply. Is there an example of this?
Otherwise, it seems to me that assigning malice isn't justified. It's surely a fast-moving/evolving feature which was added recently, and stabilizing the API for general use means they have to support it in that form ad infinitum. Sure, it would be ideal if they committed to that from the beginning, but I can understand the schedule pressure and priorities.
Indeed a by product of the design ensures that Copilot does not work on oss (vscode mit) which other cloud development vendors which compete that codespaces uses but the problem is much wider.
For example dotnet tooling, pylance, etc. Most of the popular programming languages where microsoft is the primary maintainer of lsp/editor tooling by design is not open.