fr4nkr 6 hours ago

I noticed this the other day when I installed VSCodium on my new Windows box. I had a functional setup for one day, then the next day I couldn't install a language extension I direly needed.

It's left a very sour taste in my mouth. I've used Emacs for ages and despite being a much more niche editor, it's never been so hard-dependent on centralized repositories, and the centralized repositories it does have (ELPA/MELPA) are apparently a lot more reliable than OpenVSX. Installing Emacs packages manually from source is a breeze, doing so with VSC is masochistic.

VSC is not really "open source" in any meaningful sense. It is just plainly unusable if you don't do things the way Microsoft wants you to. I do respect the VSCodium devs for trying to make VSC more properly open, but it does feel like a futile effort.

  • eddythompson80 4 hours ago

    I feel that you're conflating few concepts, hackability, "open source", single point of failure architectures.

    Yes, VSC is less hackable than emacs, but I don't think it's necessarily the same thing. VSC (and others like it) are going for a more streamlined "App Store" experience, while emacs is going for a more DIY/hackable style editor. You can always fetching the VSIX file and sideload it is if the "store" is down though.

    Yes, VSC is less "open source" than emacs. if "open sourceness" is a score out of 10 or something. Pretty sure RMS would argue linux is less "open source" than emacs too.

    Not sure why this is futile for the VSCodium devs. They are taking a dependency on a service for installing extensions. The solutions is more readonly mirrors for the official OpenVSX endpoint.

    If your main archlinux mirror is down, you don't cry about the centralized state of our life. You use a different mirror. You throw in 5 or 10 in case one or two are down. I understand why a company like Microsoft might want a more centralized service to distribute the extensions. But for an open source clone? is Microsoft also expected to create the mirror clone?

    • fr4nkr 3 hours ago

      My point about VSC is that brands itself as "open source" when Microsoft clearly intends for it to have a proprietary, tightly controlled ecosystem. It's not just RMS-unapproved, it's practically a lie. You can use it as a FOSS editor, but only if you are willing to accept a vastly subpar experience. Oh, and they've started cracking down on people using their proprietary VSC plugins in derived editors, too.

      I expected it to be a little less convenient to leave Microsoft's beaten path. I did not expect it to be a massive waste of time. This is what I meant by futile. Not only is it apparently very brittle, it's missing large swaths of VSC's ecosystem. Hell, I don't even know if the extension I wanted is available on OpenVSX because it's still down!

      If Microsoft hadn't openwashed their product, I wouldn't care nearly as much.

      Besides, Emacs still provides a streamlined system for managing packages on top of being hackable. It even makes installing and upgrading packages straight from a Git repo easy. Sometimes you can have your cake and eat it too.

      • watusername an hour ago

        I wonder if more differentiated branding would have helped. Chrome/Chromium is another example that came to mind: Like "Code - OSS" (the open-source base of VSCode), Chromium works just fine as a browser but with fewer Google-related features (syncing, DRM, etc). People seem to happily use Chromium despite the limitations (many actively seek them!), and I don't remember there being a controversy like this.

      • mrlongroots 2 hours ago

        Exactly this.

        For me, the C/C++ language pack stopped working overnight with Cursor. This was clearly because of commercial concerns about derivative IDEs fairly and squarely gaining traction over the original product. But it broke my workflow a couple hours before a meeting.

        I use neovim with LSPs and this is unimaginable in my world. I have started using IDEs only because the productivity gains from better LLM integration are undeniable. Sure I moved to clangd in Cursor and it was all fine, but the IDE actively pushes you to install Microsoft extensions, that can be yanked off whenever some Msft PM decides "oh we didn't actually want our competitors to be making money".

        LLVM/GCC/Neovim/Apache projects are open-source. Anything that is "open-source until it is not" is not open source, and this perfectly describes VSCode today.

    • teruakohatu 3 hours ago

      > is Microsoft also expected to create the mirror clone?

      Allowing open source VS Code (ie. VS Code you compiled from Microsoft’s repo) to access extensions would be enough. Nobody is asking Microsoft for more than basic access. It’s does not even require a code changes, just a policy change.

      Even Google allows Chrome forks to access the Chrome Store.

  • bogwog 5 hours ago

    For context, Open VSX is run by the Eclipse foundation, which also develops the Eclipse Theia editor, which is basically a clone of VS Code (not a fork, like VS Codium).

    The Open VSX registry is open source (https://github.com/eclipse/openvsx) and self-hostable, although I have no experience with that. I assume it's possible to host your own instance with the extensions you want instead of relying on the free public instance.

    Personally I'm more of a Sublime guy, but people looking for an open VSC alternative should consider Theia over VSC forks. It seems like the smarter long term investment if you want to get out from Microsoft's control.

    • bobajeff an hour ago

      Even though I've heard of Theia Editor before I don't think I've ever seriously looked at it until now. It honestly looks like a good alternative to vscode. (It basically looks like a straight up clone, which is good for me) I'll definitely give it a try.

    • TiredOfLife 15 minutes ago

      Theia is based on Microsoft Monaco editor. Its a fork with a different ui

  • veidr 2 hours ago

    It’s plenty open source — that is why all these forks exist!

    VS Code itself does not work without various propriety stuff, but that is a different thing. A large number of open-source projects work that way. If you don’t like the proprietary stuff, the recourse is to fork it, modify it, and implement the remaining stuff yourself.

  • 999900000999 3 hours ago

    You can always clone the extensions repo and build locally. Should take 10 minutes at most

    I’m not sure how this could actually work without a centralized repo.

    If I’m going to use VSCode I’ll just use it, I don’t need to play with forks, etc

  • tiahura an hour ago

    Pointless was my thought after initially installing it years ago. Ok, I’m installing this open source “clean” version, just to install a bunch of MS proprietary spyware extensions? Why not just use the real thing?

joshstrange 7 hours ago

I'm sure some (many?) will disagree with me but:

VSCode is Android. Or rather, VSCode's source is AOSP and the marketplace, plugins, etc are Google Play Services.

I say that with maximum derision.

  • lenerdenator 5 hours ago

    I mean, it's Microsoft. We all knew that to an extent going in.

    Google, on the other hand, pretended to be the FOSS crusader while setting themselves up for a ton of vendor lock-in that would not only have gotten 90s MS convicted on antitrust, but Bill Gates crucified on the National Mall.

  • amadeuspagel 6 hours ago

    > VSCode is Android

    Yes, an open source project that creates immense value, but fails to fulfill some purist fantasy.

    • dizhn 6 hours ago

      Like have a working keyboard?

      • charcircuit 4 hours ago

        Components that are not used, that almost always get replaced by vendors do not get much love. That the base AOSP should be optimized to use out of the box is a purist fantasy. In reality AOSP is made with the understanding that vendors are going to customize it. A lot of Android is designed to be modular, you can easily install a different keyboard app.

      • JLCarveth 5 hours ago

        My android phone doesn't have a working keyboard?

        • 3np 5 hours ago

          You use stock Android Open Source keyboard, not closed-sourced Gboard? Can you type in Chinese?

  • 38 7 hours ago

    as someone who has reversed the Google Play Services API, its utterly evil and you are correct that its about as far from open source as you can get

    • jillyboel 2 hours ago

      Can you please elaborate? Would love to hear more.

  • ohgr 5 hours ago

    A good analogy. I always felt a little dirty using VScode. Back to tmux, vim a few months back like it has been for the last 20 odd years.

    • cdelsolar 4 hours ago

      How do you run Cline on it

      • ohgr 4 hours ago

        I don’t use any AI agents to write code. I spend most of my time undoing shit shows left by people who do.

exceptione 8 hours ago

There is not much to see on a server that is down, so let me share some free advice instead.

Visit Eclipse Theia in the mean time when you are serious about de-risking from VSCode. I think VSCodium is doing an uphill battle here, while Microsoft can't help them self being a sales company first. In Theia, everything is open and free of spyware. MS is under no obligation to provide an OSS editor, but playing tricks after luring people in is not nice.

EDIT:

1. Eclipse Theia is a different platform than Eclipse the Java IDE.

2. link: https://theia-ide.org/#theiaidedownload

  • mdaniel 8 hours ago

    https://theia-ide.org/docs/user_install_vscode_extensions/#c... (sigh)

    > Please note that a few parts of the VS Code extension API are only stubbed in Theia. Extensions will be installable, but some features might not work as expected.

    Also, I thought Theia was a cloud IDE, and it seems like I was mostly right in that 2/3rds of their offering is (localhost:3000 & docker) but they also now apparently bundle it in Electron which I haven't tried

    • exceptione 8 hours ago

      Note they say that most extensions are compatible, and those not listed as compatible might still be.

      The API surface covers almost 100% that of vscode, I only see some AI integration API's that are stubbed, and that is because Theia has their own vision here and doesn't want to depend on MS.

      The complete API compatibility list is here, the stubbed API's are not core imho:

      https://eclipse-theia.github.io/vscode-theia-comparator/stat...

  • j0e1 5 hours ago

    From my experience having attempted to migrate away from VSCodium (in the attempts to de-VSCode) and build atop Theia as a platform, there are few things to consider:

    - The build system is finicky and can easily take hours to figure/fix.

    - The error-reporting is severely lacking. You can be lost why something internal isn't working and go on a rabbit-trail with your favorite AI-copilot, etc.

    - Documentation is lacking. You have to dive into the platform code to actually figure things out.

    - This can be seen positively but there are quite a few new things being introduced regularly (especially AI-related) which, for a platform, isn't always ideal.

  • sergiotapia 5 hours ago

    Why in earth would they stain their efforts with the "eclipse" name. Screenshots look great!

    • mdaniel 25 minutes ago

      I in some sense empathize with you, in that Eclipse have a minor branding problem, a major discoverability problem for all of their projects of subprojects of projects to track the projects. That said, Eclipse the editor was all in on building a platform[1] upon which other people could build their own editors. It was quite popular before Electron arrived and sucked all the oxygen out of the rich text delivery space

      Eclipse the IDE also sat on their laurels and got their lunch eaten by JetBrains on the functionality front and VSCode on the extensible platform front

      1: <https://wiki.eclipse.org/Rich_Client_Platform/> or <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eclipse_(software)#Rich_client...>

  • bsder 5 hours ago

    > MS is under no obligation to provide an OSS editor, but playing tricks after luring people in is not nice.

    Microsoft is partly to blame, but people have been warning about this over and over and over ad nauseam and people still choose to use VSCode. You couldn't even get people to not use the proprietary extensions for C/C++, Python and remote development.

    The problem is that Microsoft dedicates enough resource to development that everybody else looks like a rounding error.

    For example, anybody could have produced the Language Server Protocol, but nobody had the critical mass until Microsoft shoved it down everybody's throats.

    Until somebody puts a significant amount of money behind an alternative, Microsoft is going to continue to win this battle.

    (I was going to also say "or the OSS guys all unify behind a choice" but Hell will freeze over before that happens.)

    • owebmaster 5 hours ago

      > (I was going to also say "or the OSS guys all unify behind a choice" but Hell will freeze over before that happens.)

      The editor war is going as strong as ever, emacs vs vim will still be here in 20 years. Compared to 10 years ago, the amount of people using emacs and vim only grew, although VSCode growth was 1000x faster.

      • skydhash 37 minutes ago

        I was watching the "Simple Made Easy" talk by Rick Hickey, and while he was talking more about programming languages, the talk could extend easily to editors and other type of tooling. People are always going for easy, not simple.

        Vim is very simple (a composable language for editing, straightforward integration with cli tools, easily extendable,...). Emacs is simple (Major mode that dictates main operations and display, minor modes for additional features, integrations between them can be described more as a complex web than a simple graph...).

        VS Code is easy (helpful suggestion for plugins, Familiar IDE-like interface, default setup, ready to hack on projects,...), but scratch that surface and the complexity appears (behemoth web engine, settings all over the place, app store like marketplace, extension are full blown software project,...). All the cons of IDE with none of the pros.

  • imcritic 7 hours ago

    Why would I switch from vscodium to theia?

    • bangaladore 6 hours ago

      Theia is not a fork of vscode (even though it looks like it). It uses VSCode's code editor (Monoco) and is written from the ground up. Presumably allowing it to support extensions, that for example, vscode does not.

      However, its early days.

      • TiredOfLife 12 minutes ago

        Theia is not a fork except all the parts that are.

      • mappu 4 hours ago

        > However, its early days.

        Theia has been out for eight years now,

loloquwowndueo 8 hours ago

Remember vs code is designed to fracture and the forks are an integral part of that. https://ghuntley.com/fracture/

  • ghuntley 7 hours ago

    Thanks for the share. Yeah, building upon VSCode (MIT) is a stupid idea. Regarding OpenVSX, it was developed whilst I was at Gitpod and transferred to the Eclipse Foundation. It's been many years now, so my memory might be a little dated as to what came first, but OpenVSX/Gitpod/Thiea/Eclipse origins can all be traced back to https://www.typefox.io/.

    Anyway. OpenVSX is classic XKCD https://xkcd.com/2347/ territory—run by a small crew of brilliant volunteers, but the entire world depends/freeloads upon them.

    • aaronvg 5 hours ago

      it's kind of wild -- none of the multimillion dollar VSCode forks (Cursor, windsurf) are working properly at the moment. It seems open-vsx is quite a vulnerable single point of failure. Searching extensions gives a 503.

      • 0cf8612b2e1e 5 hours ago

        Is that any different from a GitHub/AWS outage?

        • nawgz 4 hours ago

          Yes - no one is making 7 figures in order to keep OpenVSX online

john-h-k 2 hours ago

Lots of vim/emacs mentions so I feel obliged to mention Helix (https://helix-editor.com/). Used neovim for _years_, tried Helix for a few weeks and never looked back

  • notnmeyer 2 hours ago

    helix is so excellent.

mdaniel 33 minutes ago

I happened to be poking around in their issues to see if there were mirrors and observed that in addition to the linked status page on this thread, the underlying Eclipse Foundation has their own (multiple) status tracking channels

most relevant: https://www.eclipsestatus.io/incident/549796?mp=true

their helpdesk ticket: https://gitlab.eclipse.org/eclipsefdn/helpdesk/-/issues/5924...

the issue in their GitHub issue tracking for the site: https://github.com/EclipseFdn/open-vsx.org/issues/3805

the tl;dr seems to be a massive storage failure affecting a bunch of Eclipse services, and just like any storage problem putting all the bytes back is some "please wait"

gchamonlive 4 hours ago

Now it's as good a time as ever to try out Lazy Vim. Came to it from Lunar Vim and it just works.

Working with anything is a breeze.

I'm just not too familiar with refactoring tooling and how to configure it, but there's rarely any reason for me to use something more complicated than sed, and in those occasions I can just use ast-grep.

  • shiandow 4 hours ago

    Trying out emacs again after vsvode broke remote ssh for no apparent reason (other than their insane decision to install the whole text editor remotely). Tramps in emacs has some quirks (need to make connection timeouts faster somehow) but it just works.

    • gchamonlive 2 hours ago

      What I find nice about these terminal IDE's is that I can just deploy my config to my servers I access over ssh and it's the same experience as locally

Spunkie 3 hours ago

I'm partial to running Code - OSS and patching it with the aur/code-features and aur/code-marketplace.

rnd0 2 hours ago

Basically we've seen this movie before -look at the trajectory OSX took. As far as I know, it's not really possible to build a useable pure darwin installable OS. Puredarwin itself is stuck in whatever was released in 2018 or earlier.

Like Darwin, there may be an 'open' skeleton that vscode hangs upon, but all of the things that make it useful and attractive are being increasingly pulled behind paywalls.

I'm pretty sure most of us saw this coming a mile away. I've played a little with VS Code here and there but never put a lot of time into it because I'd rather invest my time in things I know will be here in 2035 -like vim/neovim.

throwaway42167 5 hours ago

Worth noting that you can configure VSCodium to use Microsoft's extension repo, and you can even trick extensions into thinking VSCodium is VSCode. It just can't be distributed that way out of the box for legal reasons.

Havoc 4 hours ago

This is why I've been learning neovim for the past couple weeks - the vscode reliance on Remote SSH extension felt like lock in

  • NoboruWataya 3 hours ago

    Do you have a particular configuration or set of extensions you've been looking at? I mostly use JetBrains IDEs but have been trying to get a decent neovim setup as well. I followed some random tutorial and eventually got a decent setup working but it feels fragile and I'm not sure I could reproduce it if I had to. I am looking at AstroNvim now as a potentially more stable/reproducible setup.

    • skydhash 23 minutes ago

      With editors like vim, neovim, emacs, it's way easier to get the lay of the land first (tutorial, play around with the default config,..) and then list out what you need.

      My vim config has three things only: LSP, FZF (for anything fuzzy), and Plug (to install the above two). There's also a few niceties, but I could do without them. or vendor them into the main config. But it's not my daily editor, so that's just the base config. Anything I could add on top of that would depend on the projects I would need it for. That's about 200 lines (the lsp config is 1/4 of that)

      NB. A nice talk even if it's about vim "How to Do 90% of What Plugins Do (With Just Vim)"

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XA2WjJbmmoM

rvz 7 hours ago

Looking forward to the post-mortem of this outage.

#hugops