
VS Code without Microsoft branding/telemetry/licensing - max_
https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium
======
cercatrova
Note that this doesn't work with VSCode's Remote extensions, such as for SSH,
Docker containers, and WSL. Those extensions are closed source and explicitly
check that they're running on only VSCode. I thought of using this but since I
mainly use WSL, this doesn't work for me. Still, a laudable effort.

~~~
hardwaresofton
Forgive the kneejerk reaction but it sounds like we've come full circle back
to closed source IDEs. For what reason are any of those extensions closed
source? Why are people using and championing tools with closed source
extensions that check what they're running on (in order to force you to
use/buy the original thing) in 2020?

You can pry emacs/vim from my cold dead hands -- Microsoft is trying (and
succeeding) in google-chrome-ing it's way into the productive developer space.
If that's true, I wonder what the Firefox in this analogy is? Atom? Emacs/Vim?

~~~
ohthehugemanate
See [https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/remote/faq#_why-arent-
the...](https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/remote/faq#_why-arent-the-remote-
development-extensions-or-their-components-open-source)

I love that post, because it encapsulates exactly the kind of internal logic
that traps not-fully-open organizations.

MS can't open source the remote Dev extensions, because the service that runs
it (and much of the client code) comes from other, proprietary offerings and
codebases. More concretely, they come from other teams that aren't used to
open source, are discouraged from getting used to it, and/or don't have
approval from legal to release code in the open.

This is not an EEE trap, this is normal bureaucracy for an organization the
size of MS. Consider that for almost all of VSCode's lifetime, the OSS version
has been perfectly full featured, only missing telemetry and copyrighted brand
marks. Remote Dev extensions are less than a year old.

They have the same problem with the C# debugger: owned by a proprietary team,
can't get permission to open source it.

It is extremely hard to open source "some" or "most" of your code, especially
in a company whose USP is tight integration between pieces. The legal
quagmires are horrendous. A tool that crosses so many lines, like an
integrated IDE, are backed into positions like this.

Disclosure: I work for Microsoft in a totally unrelated department.

Also, fwiw i'm a lifetime vim devotee... used it as my primary IDE for a long
time and still use it daily. But vscode won me over exactly with the remote
code extensions. Now it's the only proprietary software on my toolchain (apart
from my BIOS).

~~~
johannes1234321
I assume that it depends on old code. With old code opensourcing can be really
tough.

One reason of course is "embarrassment" as it's "ugly" code and you want to
run a full review and audit and eventually cover private APIs from other
modules. That's however solvable.

More complicated is another reason: Legacy software often contains code
contributed by contractors and acquired from external vendors, where there is
no license for making it open source. Sometimes such third party code is even
deeply webbed in and legal review is a pain as you have to figure out the
origin of essentially each line of code. This can be a lot of work.

I observed how Sun did this with Solaris and over multiple years managed to
bring it down to a handful libs with third party code (some
internationalisation thing comes to mind, meanwhile replaced in the illumnos
sphere)

~~~
giancarlostoro
> One reason of course is "embarrassment" as it's "ugly" code and you want to
> run a full review and audit and eventually cover private APIs from other
> modules. That's however solvable.

Make sure there's no offensive variable names and comments left over from
_that one guy_ who used to work here.

~~~
syshum
Everything is offensive today so that is probably a fools errand

~~~
keeganpoppen
all the more reason for me to be terrified about some of my comments and
commit messages... lol

~~~
syshum
All the more reason me not to care. safetyism is destroying society IMO

"It's now very common to hear people say, 'I'm rather offended by that.' As if
that gives them certain rights. It's actually nothing more... than a whine. 'I
find that offensive.' It has no meaning; it has no purpose; it has no reason
to be respected as a phrase. 'I am offended by that.' Well, so f'in what."
\--Steven Fry

------
kgwxd
It'd be really cool if all open source was just designed with this in mind by
the original coders. branding/telemetry/licensing should be explicit compile-
time parameters that, left unspecified, exclude it completely.

~~~
nojito
Opt out means devs get crappy data.

Only way for software to improve is to get usage data.

Would you rather be stuck with crappy software dictated by the needs and wants
by the minority?

~~~
thelittleone
Apps in the 90s didn't have user data. I was approximately as productive on
apps from the 90s as I am in modern apps today. I am more frequently
frustrated by modern apps.

~~~
vxNsr
I think this is something we need to study somehow even if it feels very true.
I often find myself wondering why they’ve made something worse than it was a
few years ago. Many parts of iOS and windows 10 have degraded from what they
were.

~~~
thelittleone
I agree totally. It could also be that user data is being used to make more
profitable products not necessarily better products for the users.

~~~
vxNsr
This rings true. We have experts in funneling people to open their wallets but
a dearth of ppl who are good at delighting, unless they see it as a way to
make you open your wallet.

------
cachestash
Can anyone explain to me why I should be concerned about vs code telemetry? I
have zero personal information in the IDE and all the code I work on is
already in the public domain with an open source license, so why should I
care?

~~~
nightowl_games
I value silence in my network traffic.

~~~
DoingIsLearning
It's interesting, if we look at the size of webpages in everyday browsing,
which can go from tens of megabytes to a few kilobytes when blocking
tracking/analytics scripts.

I wonder what would be the back of the napkin calculations for network traffic
and energy savings (local and server side) of regulating tracking and
telemetry?

Is there an environmental case to be made against modern web practices on
tracking and telemetry?

~~~
luckylion
I've really come to dislike Google over the past decade or so, but I do like
that their Speedtests, Lighthouse etc don't hide this fact from you.

Pretty much all sites I've been asked to look at were getting low scores
because of Google Tag Manager, Adsense and the like. It has a very measurable
impact, and yeah, removing it speeds up the page.

The environmental case will probably not fly for regulation, but it just might
in public shaming of large companies. "Hey, $company, your usage of
$trackingTech uses as much power per year as an average family of four. Is
that really in line with your green approach?"

------
kekebo
How does this differ from disabling telemetry in VSCode's settings? The
documentation doesn't seem to include a comparison

------
arsenalist
Isn't there already an OSS version of the Code -
[https://flathub.org/apps/details/com.visualstudio.code.oss](https://flathub.org/apps/details/com.visualstudio.code.oss)

Or is this Linux only?

~~~
commoner
That's a Flatpak version of Visual Studio Code, which only works on Linux.
Unfortunately, it's unmaintained and stuck on version 1.41.1 (December 2019).

Arch Linux users do have access to a fully open source version of Visual
Studio Code in the community repository, which includes access to the Visual
Studio Marketplace:

[https://www.archlinux.org/packages/community/x86_64/code/](https://www.archlinux.org/packages/community/x86_64/code/)

------
chenzhekl
Not sure if it's still possible to access the vast extension marketplace from
Microsoft, which is the true value. If I remember correctly, that can only be
accessed from the VS Code released by Microsoft.

[https://cdn.vsassets.io/v/M146_20190123.39/_content/Microsof...](https://cdn.vsassets.io/v/M146_20190123.39/_content/Microsoft-
Visual-Studio-Marketplace-Terms-of-Use.pdf)

~~~
kova12
Extension marketplace access it might, but I wonder if the .NET debugger will
work with it. I remember it was specifically prohibited to run on the non-
microsoft built vscode. Without this extension, the .NET coding experience is
very meh

~~~
vxNsr
Why would you code .Net in vscode vs VS Community Edition (or one of the
premium editions)? I find vs ce much better than vscode for .net stuff.

~~~
Kipters
Full-blown VS is not available on Linux

~~~
vxNsr
Fair. I was gonna ask why do .Net on Linux but then I remembered they OSS’ed
it

~~~
Kipters
Yep, it also works fairly well. I'm maintaining a couple services at my day
job that are designed to only work on Linux. VS Code is also involved because
we're heavily using the Remote Development feature (which only works in MSFT's
VS Code, not in VSCodium, because of licensing) to run the IDE core inside the
container, so the dev environment is well standardized and portable across
devs/host OS

------
floatingatoll
This is the right way to lay out a fork. It can be clearly traced and reviewed
in a short amount of time. I’ll still use mainline VSCode but it’s nice to see
someone handling the “just one purpose” approach without throwing in a lot of
other unnecessary things.

------
fgonzag
Why would you remove the MS branding? Does it somehow hurt your privacy to
acknowledge who the developer and sponsor is?

~~~
tech_dreamer
I didn't post the original link. MS collects analytics - which I am not
comfortable with. Capability matters and intentions can change later. :)

~~~
packetslave
You could always just set `telemetry.enableTelemetry` to false and continue to
use the official builds.

~~~
Silhouette
But only if you trust Microsoft to honour that setting indefinitely, and not
for example to just change it back later or hide something shady behind
another option instead. At this point, a lot of people understandably don't.

~~~
xeromal
It's open source. You could see for yourself. lol

~~~
Silhouette
Sure, and then you could check again every time there is an update. But why
bother, when there is already an uncontaminated version readily available to
solve this problem for you?

~~~
eknkc
How do you know it is uncontaminated without looking at the source code?

~~~
Silhouette
Technically you don't, just like any other software, but the risk is surely
significantly lower since everyone _including Microsoft_ is saying that what
Microsoft is doing is taking that same code and then adding its contaminants
on top.

------
chickenpotpie
Somebody correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure Amazon recommends using
this to their employees to prevent Microsoft tracking.

~~~
itsbits
You don't need to remove branding to disable tracking for corporates like
Amazon. For example, They might have some firewall in the network which blocks
tracking API.

~~~
whatshisface
You need to remove branding to be allowed by Microsoft to distribute an
unofficial build. You need to distribute an unofficial build to make sure that
the application isn't trying to find holes that might have been accidentally
left in your firewall. (Quick, without googling, which ports and dest IPs do
you need to block? Which ports/dest IPs will you need to block in the next
version that hasn't been released yet? Yeah, a losing battle.)

------
dastx
Note that this only includes Microsoft's telemetry, and it seems that
Microsoft uses the built in telemetry tooling within their extensions.
However, community extensions can still use their own telemetry, which this
wouldn't prevent.

------
blackoil
Is there a listing maintained of all the telemetry info. sent? I personally am
not in principle against telemetry, if they do not leak any private info. and
are not to chatty.

------
mister_hn
this is at least the 10th HN post about VSCodium.

