Mastodawn

Santhosh Aug 29, 2024

In roughly the past half-decade, Microsoft went from nowhere to overwhelming dominance of text editors with VSCode, ownership of majority of code hosting (and open source dev) with GitHub, ownership of the dependency stack used by most devs with npm, control over the most popular single language with TypeScript, and is trying to position copilot and ChatGPT as inevitable parts of the future dev process. Nothing negative for the ecosystem will come of this, as the last half century teaches us.

MaggieL Jan 26, 2023

Don't forget LinkedIn.

Anil Dash Jan 26, 2023

@MaggieL oh I shall absolutely forget

Michael Engard Jan 26, 2023

@anildash It’s so frustrating, because I genuinely love a whole bunch of those tools—I practically live in VS Code—but I can’t ignore the little voice in my head that knows they’ll all betray me sooner or later.

🇳🇿Jan 26, 2023

@michael @anildash you can be entirely confident of that. They're not an ally. I've never even tried VSCode nor C# just because they've got MSFT taint on them. Haven't regretted their absence from my life one bit.

Michael Engard Jan 26, 2023

@lightweight @anildash I mean, I’ve also got a MacBook and an iPhone. And a Visa credit card and Amazon Prime. I’d love to live life without any toxic corporate relationships, but it’s easier said than done. I feel like the trick is knowing which mass systems collapses are worth anticipating and preparing for.

🇳🇿Jan 26, 2023

@michael @anildash true - especially for people in the US, it appears (the rest of us aren't quite as completely pwned). Have you seen this? https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/10/technology/techs-frightful-five-theyve-got-us.html It's why I tend to refer to the #FrightfulFive - that we've allowed ourselves to get to this point is pretty terrifying. Here in Aotearoa NZ, the FF have a stranglehold on our gov't IT systems. They could literally shut the country down if they thought we were misbehaving: https://davelane.nz/mshostage Escape is a matter of principle.

Tech’s Frightful Five: They’ve Got Us

Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook and Google dominate our day-to-day activities. Imagining being forced to give up some of them could lead to hard choices.

The New York Times

🇳🇿Jan 26, 2023

@michael @anildash for the record, I've managed to divorce myself from just about all of the #FrightfulFive. I've never owned an Apple product, and use zero Microsoft anything, even closing my LinkedIn acct. Shifted off Github to my own Gitlabs. Don't use AWS or use Amazon. I have a Facebook account, but mostly use it to encourage people to move to the #Fediverse... I use LineageOS for my mobile devices & interactions with Google. Still use Google Maps (alongside OpenStreetMap.org). That's it.

🇳🇿Jan 26, 2023

@michael @anildash so I can say with confidence that "it's possible". And it's not at all unpleasant, either.

Sasha Jan 26, 2023

@lightweight @michael @anildash I applaud you but not everyone has the time or energy for it.

🇳🇿Jan 26, 2023

@Smrki @michael @anildash heh, thanks. The question is: what's the real 'cost' to those time/energy-poor people, and to the broader society? I'm quite sure it's more than I'd be willing to pay.

catsintents Jan 26, 2023

@lightweight @michael @anildash duck I thought this article was from this year it’s from six fishing years ago punch me

clacke: exhausted pixie dream boy 🇸🇪🇭🇰💙💛Feb 17, 2023

@catsintents @lightweight @michael @anildash articles we wish weren't timeless but they are

ShadSterling Jan 26, 2023

@lightweight @michael @anildash Amazon might be the easiest to replace; anything Amazon delivers is also available from Target, Best Buy, eBay, etc. if it’s for shows you can subscribe for one month a year to catch up, and when those shows end stick with other services

unlofl [Promoted Toot]Jan 27, 2023

@michael @lightweight @anildash just remember it will get worse, and they'll try to trap you with the transition cost, and have that "saved up" and set aside.

I've still got stuff in Google drive, but I've also got a NAS, etc.

LisPi Jan 28, 2023

@michael @lightweight @anildash Yeah, this issue is one of the things @pluralistic has written quite a bit about.

In my country, refusing to work with any Microsoft-derived technology in IT will basically remove >70% of jobs, right from the get-go.

We did get some good things out of M$'s laziness though, like the #LSP & #DAP #OpenStandard #protocols, which work just fine in #Emacs (why VSC when you have Emacs?) and have greatly improved its ability to be used for #Java among other languages.

🇳🇿Jan 28, 2023

@lispi314 @michael @anildash @pluralistic an obvious Microsoft dependence makes it easy to eliminate bad employment prospects... I quit my first role (as a research scientist) because they were planning to make me switch from Linux to Windows. That was in 1998. Left and started my own 100% #FOSS business. Sold that in 2012. Never used MSFT since I swore I'd never use it again (used MSO for my Masters thesis in Seattle, 1994). Haven't regretted MS' absence from my life one bit.

LisPi Jan 28, 2023

@lightweight @michael @anildash @pluralistic Most employers being bad employers makes for some bleak prospects, but successful entrepreneurship tends to require skills, dispositions and ideas I don't really have.

A fully FOSS setup producing nothing closed-source means a *lot* of customer-facing consultancy (and lots of effort to even get customers), which has burned me in very unpleasant ways in the past. Having that be my main work instead of dev doesn't sound like much of an improvement.

🇳🇿Jan 28, 2023

@lispi314 @michael @anildash @pluralistic I'm not sure that it necessarily follows that if it's #FOSS, it needs a lot of customer consultancy. In our shop, we prided ourselves in the fact that each of our dev team could happily talk to customers (usually phone, in those days), but few did so often. Most just worked hard coding. It's certainly possible, but FOSS doesn't have some of the customer-hostile (but profitable) attributes of proprietary development. (see https://davelane.nz/proprietary)

Reflections on Proprietary Software

I've been pondering proprietary software for the past couple decades.

Dave Lane

L'appel du ide Jan 28, 2023

@lispi314 I fucking love emacs, doomemacs specifically is great for us evil vim users

blausand 🐟Mar 19, 2023

@michael @lightweight @anildash
Toxic Corporate Relationships
The term has been dropped, folks.
Capital letters from here on, I guess.
#TCR

Quincy ⁂Jan 26, 2023

@lightweight @michael @anildash

I agree.

VSCod(ium) is IMHO quite usable and I won't hesitate to call Typescript excellent, but it doesn't change that:

a) I'll never trust MS,

b) I despise, deplore and reject their anti-competitive business practices;

c) their forcing of their products (and DRM) onto people is deeply reprehensible

d) their office products + OSes suck

e) their business empire (including linkedin) is way more insidious & dangerous than most people are aware.

Sören Jan 26, 2023

@michael @anildash I’m not sure there’s anything deeper going on than “we want to sell subscriptions and will make it extra easy for devs to be interested in buying them”

• “I like GitHub at home; let’s convince my employee to buy GitHub Enterprise at work”
• “boy, deploying my code to Azure is so convenient”*
etc.

(ICE is also a big GitHub client, which is a bummer)

* it sometimes feels like Azure is the only *real* driving factor behind .NET Core’s existence

Michael Engard Jan 26, 2023

@chucker @anildash Oh, I agree. I’m not conspiracy-minded about it. This is more just Google Reader-style fear that the products I really like as they are will inevitably be killed, mutilated beyond recognition, or (perhaps most realistically) evolve in a direction that increasingly benefits their owners’ business objectives at the expense of user experience. That tension is always with us, though I do think it’s exacerbated by the oligarchic upswing we’re living through.

Sören Jan 26, 2023

@michael @anildash I would indeed watch out for a classic 1990s’ MS EEE strategy

Embrace: embrace git as a useful tool.
Extend: extend git into GitHub with capabilities like an issue tracker, pull requests, etc. Increasingly entice developers to rely on GitHub specifically, not git.
Extinguish: eventually make GitHub incompatible with regular git.

アイアンハンドガンダム Jan 26, 2023

@michael @anildash use VSCodium https://vscodium.com/

VSCodium - Open Source Binaries of VSCode

Free/Libre Open Source Software Binaries of VSCode

Kiki Jan 26, 2023

@michael
@anildash
Have you ever tried VSCodium? It's a free fork of VSCode, with mostly the same features (but the extensions "store" works diffently).
Since I switched to that, the only MS things I'm using are Github (not sure what's the best alternative yet) and a mouse (nothing wrong with that, I think).

volviq Jan 26, 2023

@flauschzelle @michael @anildash try gitlab and bitbucket. both work as basic git repo, gitlab had integrated builds long before GitHub.

Michael Engard Jan 26, 2023

@volviq @flauschzelle @anildash See, I used to use BitBucket. I switched to GitHub because it was (and still is) the gold standard as both a platform and a community. I don’t want to have to give up those benefits in the name of tech liberation.

(That said, here I am on Mastodon; obviously I have *some* piratical inclinations. :D )

CAP'N (he/him)Jan 27, 2023

GitLab is a solid git-based project manager

@michael @anildash

Kiki Jan 27, 2023

@nathangs20
@michael @anildash

I know (and also use) GitLab, but there are also some criticisms of it (see somewhere else in the original post's replies), so if everyone used gitlab.com instead of github.com it would not be that much better...

Maybe a federated version could be a solution here? Then everyone could have their own instance but still create/comment on issues etc. on others' git servers without having to register a new account everywhere...

Kiki Jan 27, 2023

@nathangs20
@michael @anildash
I heard that Gitea is planning some federation features, but it looks like that's still in an early development phase. And also Gitea seems to be sponsored by some weird "Blockchain" company, which already makes me think I don't want to use it :/

Pau¹l Feb 13, 2023

@flauschzelle @nathangs20 @michael @anildash Mastodon is sponsered by several gambling companies, so I wouldn't be too critical with that blockchain company sponsorship

clacke: exhausted pixie dream boy 🇸🇪🇭🇰💙💛Feb 17, 2023

@flauschzelle @michael @nathangs20 @anildash Fedi development happens in the Forgejo community fork of Gitea and has no blockchain association.

Henrik Schönemann Jan 26, 2023

@michael @anildash Speaking of VS Code: The peculiar state is that a) the code is under MIT-license but b) the product is proprietary Microsoft with telemetry etc.

A super useful alternative I found:
https://vscodium.com/

"Free/Libre Open Source Software Binaries of VS Code" - easy to install and (for me) practically indistinguishable from the 'real' VS Code

VSCodium - Open Source Binaries of VSCode

Free/Libre Open Source Software Binaries of VSCode

Michael Engard Jan 26, 2023

@lavaeolus @anildash I’ll definitely take a peek at this—thanks to you and others who’ve recommended it!

Jeff Byrnes Jan 28, 2023

@lavaeolus @michael @anildash also, Sublime Text remains alive & well!

@michael after they killed Sunrise Calendar and now Atom, they’ll never ever get me back for anything

@anildash Don’t forget a massive graph database of interconnected employees and employers in LinkedIn that they’ve not begun to leverage yet.

🇳🇿Jan 26, 2023

@anildash just spat out my coffee.

El Diablo Roboc 😈🤖Jan 26, 2023

@anildash Microsoft has been pretty decent compared to other big companies like Meta, Twitter and Google. Their strength lies not in being open source, but on being reasonably open for everyone to use. It could be better, of course. It could be a lot worse considering it's position of hegemony.

Annamal Jan 26, 2023

@ElDiabloRoboc @anildash Google was decent...until they weren't

Cardozograph Jan 27, 2023

@ElDiabloRoboc @anildash Yeah, it could be worse. But how long can they hold out against shareholder pressure to squeeze more bucks out?

Bill Hooker 😷Jan 26, 2023

@anildash But Jesus said unto them, A prophet is not without honour, but in his own country, and among his own kin, and in his own house.

Andrew H – № 2025 Jan 26, 2023

@anildash it’s crazy. copilot, GitHub/NPM, and typescript form an amazing triad… a feedback loop where each is enforced by growth in the other two. They could announce a serviceNow- or IBM-like competitor built on top of all that

sayrer Jan 26, 2023

@anildash It was really only a sabbatical. At Mozilla, it was funny that all of our users were on Windows, none of us used Windows, but we all had a Windows machine because their editors and debuggers were the best (Visual Studio and WinDbg)

Aurora Penguin Jan 26, 2023

@anildash all of these things except for maybe the npm repo are extremely easy to switch off of. Don't like vscode? Use another program. Don't like GitHub? Git clone+ one of several issue migration tools

I get what you are saying but these platforms have hardly any lock in compared to other spooky scary monopolies

Anil Dash Jan 26, 2023

@aurorapenguin maybe the real lock-in was the friends we made along the way.

Aurora Penguin Jan 26, 2023

@anildash unironically the real lock in is the "community" (friends we made along the way, :P) of GitHub, there is probably some study showing how many people wouldn't contribute a pull request if it wasn't on GitHub vs a gitlab instance or even a mailing list

Anil Dash Jan 26, 2023

@aurorapenguin yeah I wasn’t kidding

daniel s.Jan 26, 2023

@aurorapenguin @anildash you can also use verdaccio to cache and self-host npm packages

clacke: exhausted pixie dream boy 🇸🇪🇭🇰💙💛Jan 27, 2023

@aurorapenguin @anildash Gitea has been trying to migrate from github to gitea for years now. Github's rate limiters keep them from making a clean move.

Aurora Penguin Jan 30, 2023

@clacke @anildash on what? API requests for issues?

clacke: exhausted pixie dream boy 🇸🇪🇭🇰💙💛Jan 31, 2023

@aurorapenguin @anildash Yes. They can't just make a clean cut where they download all issues, upload all issues and then switch over, even if they do it with multiple accounts in parallel, because the rate limiter prevents it with the amount and size of issues they have.

Zorro Notorious MEB 😡Jan 26, 2023

@anildash Eh? You're being sarcastic, right? 😈

Oh, yeah, you left out LinkedIn during a layoff epidemic.

Jack Wellborn Jan 26, 2023

@anildash And only good things happen when a company uses its billions to subsidize their products in order to undercut and put all other competitors out of business.

Ross Grady Jan 26, 2023

@anildash I wish I could contribute any sort of counter-argument, but just yesterday I was looking at the VSCode roadmap and noticing that several of the fundamental security-related items that were supposedly focus areas for 2021(!!), like basically anything to keep the extensions ecosystem from becoming a cesspool of malware/supply chain exploits, haven't even been marked as "in progress."

I *was* amused to note that they have some rudimentary enterprise management options for VSCode -- which are Windows Registry Group Policy based, like it's 2005 or something. Guess the big strategy is to get everyone onto VSCode and then we'll have to . . . switch back to Windows??

Mitch Jan 26, 2023

@rossgrady @anildash actually, group policy is extending to Linux, so who knows where we're headed.

Ross Grady Jan 26, 2023

@mitchkiah @anildash 2023: THE YEAR OF LINUX ON THE DESKTOP

daniel s.Jan 26, 2023

@anildash i'm really looking forward to seeing forgejo implement federation and we are long, long overdue for a successor to npm for node package managment. yarn ain't it, plus they only proxy npm, they don't have their own library (yarn v2 is both better and worse). i would love to see a p2p solution that uses something like the bittorent protocol to eliminate the need for a centralized package repository.

Bud Gibson Jan 26, 2023

@anildash I think the real issue is that small, independent projects work well at small scale. When they get larger, they become full time jobs for teams of people. Hence, Microsoft.