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It is important for free software to use free software infrastructure (drewdevault.com)

submitted 9 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Speaking about VSCode it is also open-source until you realize that 1) the language plugins that you require can only compiled and run in official builds of VSCode and 2) Microsoft took over a lot of the popular 3rd party language plugins, repackage them with a different license… making it so if you try to create a fork of VSCode you can’t have any support for any programming language because it won’t be an official VSCode build. MS be like :).

I'm opposed to having repositories for plugins. I don't want my code editor to connect to the internet at all. If I need some popular plugin, it should already be available in the repository of the distro that I'm using. Some distributions of VIM and Emacs download a bunch of plugins on launch from who knows where. I don't get why people are fine with that.

It's similar with Flatpak and Snap. Oh and each programming language has its own package manager too, of course (NPM belongs to Microsoft too, btw). Everyone and everything wants its own package manager or a separate distribution system.

For now I use VSCodium in firejail to prevent it from accessing the network and I don't install new plugins. I haven't heard of any better editor, unfortunately.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

I suggest you have a read at https://ghuntley.com/fracture/

What you're doing is a solution but it doesn't mean it is legal nor should anyone go through that pain. Microsoft completely subverted the spirit of open-source with VSCode.

I’m opposed to having repositories for plugins. I don’t want my code editor to connect to the internet at all.

I'm not much against having repositories with plugins, extensions or whatever BUT they should be like Debian, you can just pack everything into images / a folder and use offline for ever when required. This is one of my big criticisms over Flatpak you can't simply have a working and fully offline archive of the thing that will survive forever without Internet. Same goes for modern Docker powered solutions and JavaScript frameworks.

I'm "really opposed" to having to rely o Internet connections to setup and do anything, things should be done in a way that you can have it all offline from setup to daily tasks.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

I've read it, but I don't really understand the legal issue. I'm also not sure what could be illegal about VSCodium. It uses the Open VSX store for downloading extensions (but not every extension is on there).

It would certainly be better if VSCode was under a Copyleft license, so that it couldn't be turned into proprietary software and maybe that way addons would also have to be Free Software, like in Blender. But Microsoft clearly doesn't want that.

I’m not much against having repositories with plugins, extensions or whatever BUT they should be like Debian, you can just pack everything into images / a folder and use offline for ever when required.

Yeah, that's a good idea. They could also just be added to Debian, which would solve this problem, but there also would be another benefit for me. Most people don't care about that, but I want to only use Free Software. When I install something from Debian's free repository, I don't have to worry that it might be proprietary, because they only allow Free Software there. I don't have this certainty when installing software from most other places.

Same goes for modern Docker powered solutions and JavaScript frameworks.

Some JavaScript frameworks and libraries seem to be packaged in Debian. But most people use NPM, of course.