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Software and services are not the same thing.

For some examples: RMS being a douchebag has nothing to do with the usefulness of gdb, nor can that circumstance affect the utility in any imaginable scenario.

Microsoft setting censorship policies (aka ToS) on a website they own and control directly affects the utility of npm/yarn/clients. Their website, their rules.



Well, this comparison seems to be close enough. What about VSCode and Github itself?


The time for GitHub is over. I have moved all of my repositories away from there that do not depend on GitHub-only integrated services, and am migrating my DNS and domains/hosting off of those integrated services this week. You should too. If you work there, you should quit.

https://sneak.berlin/20200307/the-case-against-microsoft-and...

VS Code has had to fork to remove the unethical spyware portions within it placed there by Microsoft:

https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium


Good for you. However, the general sentiment doesn't seem to behave the same way. I haven't noticed a mass Github exodus at all, aside from some people on the internet being vocal about it for the first month after the Github acquisition. Same with VSCode.

I realize this is just pure anecdata and not a legitimately researched observation, but I don't know a single dev in real life who either switched away from Github or VSCode due to those concerns, despite having a wide variety of dev friends from all kinds of backgrounds, including big tech devs, non-tech company devs, fully remote devs, self-taught devs, small startup devs, outside of the US devs, freelancer devs, etc.


I know a couple of projects that switched to gitlab. I use gitlab for my personal projects. I've abstained from moving Red Moon away from GitHub because it's still where people are, and I have some doubts about GitLab's VC-funded model (will they be able to stay as open forever?). I also want to consider other options, like SourceHut. At the same time, it is in the back of my mind and I am ready to move away at the first sign of extend/extinguish.


Just for reference, vscodium is not a fork to remove Microsoft's code - it is just a build tool for the open source repo as explained in the README.

"When we [Microsoft] build Visual Studio Code, we do exactly this. We clone the vscode repository, we lay down a customized product.json that has Microsoft specific functionality (telemetry, gallery, logo, etc.), and then produce a build that we release under our license."

"When you clone and build from the vscode repo, none of these endpoints are configured in the default product.json. Therefore, you generate a "clean" build, without the Microsoft customizations, which is by default licensed under the MIT license"


> Just for reference, vscodium is not a fork to remove Microsoft's code - it is just a build tool for the open source repo as explained in the README.

When a certain build configuration enables major spyware features, and that is the build configuration for the released version by the first party, and another build configuration (that is not released by the first party) disables those major spyware features, the distinction between a fork/patch and a "different build configuration" becomes semantically meaningless.

It's a fork, regardless of how they care to present it. The result of the build configuration is embedded in the release. Consider it a "binary fork" if you don't like considering json "source code".


When the first line of the repo you yourself linked says ‘It’s not a fork’, I believe we will take it instead of your semantics about it.




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