Open tech, be afraid. Be very afraid. Microsoft owns both Visual Studio Code “VSCode” and MS-GitHub, two intertwined and utterly proprietary product-service ecosystems with a bit of open-source in their core to lure us in. Because they love open source? Yeah, no.
Soon after leaving GitPod whose technology links the two, Geoffrey Hunt last year explained their strategy and what it’s doing to our open tech world, in a great and “harrowing” article, “Visual Studio Code is designed to fracture” https://ghuntley.com/fracture/
“The future of software development tooling that is being built is closed as ****, and people seem to be okay with it…”
This is why MS-GitHub is not our friend.
This is why falling for their trick, disguising MS-VSCode as a neat “free” editor, will come back and haunt and hurt us.
Vendor lock-in double-whammy. Using open source as “a financial weapon”.
“… the biggest challenge for Gitpod, GitLab, Datacoves, OpenBB, Foam, et al lies ahead - developing open language tooling for each community where Microsoft has forked the communities over to proprietary language servers…”
If we have a grain of public spirit, if we are motivated at all by the Freedom that’s supposed to be afforded by Free-Libre Open-Source Software, we must #GiveUpGithub, we must recognise the trap, we must choose truly open #FreedomTech.
Mid November, time once again to remind our Friends, Family & Followers that #FreedomTech is the way to avoid harmful #Gadgeteering. Let's repeat: Don't Fall for the Surveillance Tech Trap: learn How To Buy a Freedom-Respecting Gadget. Seek out a Good Gadget Giving Guide. Let's reach out to the uninitiated: where should someone begin who isn't already immersed in Freedom Tech? I'll try to put out something. Can you too join the movement, maybe post your own recommendations, write a short article, a round-up of the issues and the alternatives that respect our freedom, link to existing guides? Who's in?