I used to think GitHub Codespaces would help popularise Gitpod but now realize it is the other way around. Gitpod is currently permitted to exist in the Visual Studio Code ecosystem to popularise GitHub Codespaces, and Microsoft can step in at any moment to create legal crises that strategically divide the market from a business perspective because, like Apple and their AppStore: it is their ecosystem that they control and they are in absolute control.

In this blog post, we explore the ecosystem of open-source forks, revisit the story so far with how Microsoft has been transforming from products to services, go deep into why the Visual Studio Code ecosystem is designed to fracture, and the legal implications of this design then discuss future problems faced by the software development ecosystem if our industry continues as-is on the current path...

  • jeffhykin@lemm.ee
    ·
    1 year ago

    "Its MIT open source and anyone can use it!"

    • But Microsoft only publishes a not-MIT licensed one
    • And if you DONT use that one, the extension store created by microsoft wont work
    • And even if you make your own extension store (which people did for VS Codium) you legally wont be allowed to use any of the de-facto quality of life extensions (Python, SSH, Docker, C#, C++, Live Share, etc)
    • And those extensions default to needing fully-closed-source tools develped by microsoft
    • AND, unlike Chromium, anything that tries to fork and build on top of VS Code, (e.g. gitpod; a web-based dev environment) will die because none of the de-facto/core/quality-of-life extensions people are used to will be available. They'll have to use the Microsoft alternative (e.g. Github workspaces)

    The MIT codebase is just bait

    • eluvatar@programming.dev
      ·
      1 year ago

      I think when it becomes a problem it won't be hard for the community to build their own extensions that can be used anywhere. It doesn't hurt right now so that work hasn't been done yet.

      • jeffhykin@lemm.ee
        ·
        1 year ago

        Will it ever hurt though? Its designed to make GitPod just feel uncomfortable while making VS Code feels good.