Visual Studio Code is designed to fracture

A couple of moments ago, I finished reading the article by Rob O'Leary about the pervasive data collection done by Visual Studio Code. Now that I'm no longer an employee at Gitpod, I'm finally able to author a blog post freely about something that has been troubling me for quite some time...

Whilst Visual Studio Code is "open-source" (as per the OSD) the value-add which transforms the editor into anything of value ("what people actually refer to when they talk about using VSCode") is far from open and full of intentionally designed minefields that often makes using Visual Studio Code in any other way than what Microsoft desires legally risky...

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