I used to think GitHub Codespaces would help popularise Gitpod but now realize it is the other way around. Gitpod is currently permitted to exist in the Visual Studio Code ecosystem to popularise GitHub Codespaces, and Microsoft can step in at any moment to create legal crises that strategically divide the market from a business perspective because, like Apple and their AppStore: it is their ecosystem that they control and they are in absolute control.

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

  • armchair_progamer@programming.dev
    20·
    1 year ago

    It’s funny because, I’m probably the minority, but I strongly prefer JetBrains IDEs.

    Which ironically are much more “walled gardens”: closed-source and subscription-based, with only a limited subset of parts and plugins open-source. But JetBrains has a good track record of not enshittifying and, because you actually pay for their product, they can make a profitable business off not doing so.

    • eluvatar@programming.dev
      41·
      1 year ago

      Yes their stuff is great, I’ve been using rider over vs for years.

      That said, for new stuff vscode is better because it’ll have a decent extension, where as jetbrains will only really support popular stuff. For example the Svelte support in the past wasn’t great, as it’s been getting more popular they brought integration with the Svelte IDE tooling.

    • ck_@discuss.tchncs.deOP
      31·
      1 year ago

      But JetBrains has a good track record of not enshittifying and, because you actually pay for their product

      I disagree.

      Jetbrains is going essentially the same way with kotlin. Even though it’s open source on paper, Jetbrain is gatekeeping it to a degree where they are actively blocking changes that would make it easier for LSP developers to integrate (thus potentially creating competition to their intellij products ).

    • mrkite@programming.dev
      11·
      1 year ago

      It’s funny because, I’m probably the minority, but I strongly prefer JetBrains IDEs.

      So does anyone who was forced to use eclipse.