7 ms·
VSCodium: Binary releases of VSCode without MS branding, telemetry and licensing
- Dinux 8y agoI don't see the beneficial element to this project. Visual Studio Code is opensource, free of charge and used by millions at this point, why would anyone want another license just because of the license alone?
- bakoo 8y agoFor me, it's more about telemetry than licensing.
- immigrantsheep 8y agoAFAIK telemetry can be disabled with "telemetry.enableTelemetry": false
- Zekio 8y agoisn't it agains't GDPR having it be like that?
- chii 8y agowouldn't downloading and agreeing to the eula suffice for purposes of this?
- majewsky 8y agoNo. GDPR requires that users must be able to use the service after opting out of data collection (except if the data collection is required for rendering the service to the user). A EULA, in contrast, must be accepted, otherwise the service may not be used.
- jonathonf 8y agoAn opt-in is required under GDPR for personally identifiable information, not "any data ever". Anonymous/aggregated data collection is allowed under the GDPR, though this data collection should still be made clear to the user (and it is on https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/supporting/FAQ#_gdpr-and-vs-code https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/supporting/FAQ#_gdpr-and-...).
- carlmr 8y agoDoesn't it suffice to set the following in your User Settings? "telemetry.enableTelemetry": false Honestly I'm very happy to give telemetry data. Microsoft is doing so much to improve the experience, they can make it better with some data.
- lucideer 8y agoThis doesn't suffice unfortunately. That setting has worked inconsistently, or not at all, and add far as I've seen in my own testing it never disables all telemetry. There have been issues open on GitHub about this for a long time, though it's a few months since I checked there for updates (I stopped bothering and just put it in my firewall rules; I still see blocked connections in thy log today). I'm a very happy vscode user, but this is one antifeature does continue to bother me.
- bunderbunder 8y agoIt really is annoying that they don't make it opt-in instead. They've got plenty of users; I can't imagine they need to be collecting usage statistics from everyone. I'm curious what would happen if a moderate-size country (say, Belgium) were to pass a law saying that telemetry must be opt-in. I bet it would convince everyone to just be universal opt-in for simplicity's sake. That said, I bet it's still nothing compared to the level of data collection that a typical website does these days.
- lucideer 8y ago> @bunderbunder I bet it's still nothing compared to the level of data collection that a typical website does these days. I'd say the opposite. Consider that (a) you typically visit websites briefly and periodically while most vscode users have it open as long as their computer is on, and (b) Electron provides access to lot more device data than the browser sandbox. The reason websites tend to have such far-reaching and devious user-tracking methods is because they're working in such a restricted environment and have to innovate; native desktop apps have far less restrictions.
- 8y ago
- thepumpkin1979 8y agoExactly. I like the idea of having VSCodium as an option but I don’t have an urging need to use this fork since just removing a license and telemetry endpoints doesn’t really add any value compared to the official package.
- rambojazz 8y agoIt doesn't look like a fork to me. It only seems to be a build script for building VS (and possibly remove some anti-features).
- hiccuphippo 8y agoRemoving telemetry adds a lot of value. To each its own, I guess.
- GordonS 8y agoIt would add value if VSCode didn't allow you to disable it and didn't document what data was sent - but it is documented, and it's trivial to disable it if you choose to do so. I don't see the point of this.
- swongel 8y agoFor use in FLOSS distributions like Ubunutu or Debian. Like how Firefox got rebranded as [Iceweasel/Icecat](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_IceCat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_IceCat) so their logo/branding didn't have to be distributed by FLOSS distributions.
- rambojazz 8y agoActually I think this would be rather useful to have. I don't use VS personally, but if I understand correctly their binaries are not free even though users can build their own from a free source code. If this "VSCodium" simplifies the building process, and also removes some anti-features in the process such as telemetry, I think it has value.
- hiccuphippo 8y agoIf there's people that use Chromium binary builds, there's people that will use this.
- AndrewDavis 8y agoMakes sense for inclusion in package repositories.
- xenophonf 8y agoThe VSCode binary release is not open source and not redistributable but rather "source available", and "free of charge" doesn't confer "freedom to tinker". VSCode does have costs associated with it's use, specifically its users' privacy, which they give up by agreeing to Microsoft's data collection terms. You may not value your freedom to tinker or your right to privacy, but the people who run and use this project do.
- WalterGR 8y agoYou can replace “VSCode” with “Chrome” and “Microsoft” with “Google” in your comment. I guess that’s why this project is called VSCodium.
- jillesvangurp 8y agoThe source license and binary distribution license are different. The source code is MIT licensed; nothing wrong with that. Great license for this. The binaries are provided with a different license that also covers components from third parties that may not be in the vs code repo as well as telemetry and other data gathered. If for whatever reason you don't like this license, you can build from source. This project seems to do that and remove all of the MS branding and telemetry. There are only a handful of commits on the project so it does not look like it is massive change. The big question is whether that adds enough value and whether this project will make enough effort to keep it's fork up to date. I agree that for the vast majority of users, using the official binaries should be perfectly fine. MS did a fine job with this product. But nothing wrong with having the choice.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- SparkyMcUnicorn 8y agoLooking around, this repo is just a few ~10 line shell scripts. Very simple, and it isn't a fork of vscode. It clones the Microsoft repo directly and builds it from that.
- RBO2 8y agoHow different is this from Chromium and Chrome?
- ryanolsonx 8y agoF the EULA license. That's what VS Code is licensed under when you download from their site, _not_ the MIT license. That's the heart of why this is excellent.
- diaz 8y agoFinally. It obviously is something that flies over the heads of most people here at least by reading the comments. This is great.
- josteink 8y agoI don’t personally see the need, but the fact that someone can do this should at least once and for all settle how “real” the open-sourceyness of VSCode is.
- eckza 8y agoSome of us want to write code without shipping a bunch of usage data / telemetry / whatever back up to the Mothership. It's the principle of the thing; and anything that shaves off a few clock cycles is fine by me.
- jakear 8y agoVS Code already provides mechanisms to disable all background network activity.
- falcolas 8y agoDefaults matter. They matter even more given Microsoft's demonstrated history of quietly adding new telemetry and metrics which are enabled. I have no skin in this particular game, but I'm glad to see the work being done.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- btinker 8y agoAre you sure? This is what MS says about it: Data Collection. The software may collect information about you and your use of the software, and send that to Microsoft. Microsoft may use this information to provide services and improve our products and services. You may opt-out of many of these scenarios, but not all, as described in the product documentation. https://code.visualstudio.com/license https://code.visualstudio.com/license
- k__ 8y agoNice idea. With Chromium there is a bit of a problem with protected video codecs, but I think this doesn't apply to VSCodium.
- cube00 8y agoHopefully they don't start letting plugins show video ads.
- jasonkostempski 8y agoTo me, that's a feature.
- k__ 8y agoWas a bit of a hassle to get popular video platforms running ;/
- Vinnl 8y agoWell, with Firefox people were complaining about the removal of ALSA support, with the reasoning that people who liked that were also likely to have telemetry turned off. So a downside might be that your usage patterns are not taken into account when using this or turning off telemetry in regular VSCode - though I'd claim that that is to be expected and completely reasonable.
- ahoka 8y agoRelated: https://code.headmelted.com/ https://code.headmelted.com/
- codetrotter 8y agoStrange way of downloading and executing the installer. Most usually you see either 1. Pipe it to an instance of sh or bash, or 2. Download, mark executable, run. Instead, what they do is they run wget in a subshell and redirect the output of the subshell as input to the source builtin command. . <( wget -O - https://code.headmelted.com/installers/yum.sh ) Don't really see why though. Speaking of which, the following would have been better: curl -sSf https://code.headmelted.com/installers/yum.sh | bash With these parameters, curl should wait for the whole script to be successfully downloaded, and if it isn't it won't write any of it to stdout. Especially important because the authors of the above mentioned script have NOT wrapped the whole script in a function which is then called at the end of the script. If the download fails midway and you are using wget -O - or curl without -f then you execute an incomplete script. Also, executing the script by using the source builtin is annoying because if you answer "no" to the first question asked by this script then it closes your terminal window :<
- kowdermeister 8y agoH̶m̶m̶,̶ ̶t̶h̶i̶s̶ ̶w̶i̶l̶l̶ ̶n̶o̶t̶ ̶f̶l̶y̶ ̶:̶)̶ ̶ I̶'̶m̶ ̶p̶r̶e̶t̶t̶y̶ ̶s̶u̶r̶e̶ ̶y̶o̶u̶ ̶c̶a̶n̶'̶t̶ ̶j̶u̶s̶t̶ ̶s̶t̶r̶i̶p̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶l̶i̶c̶e̶n̶s̶e̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶a̶ ̶s̶o̶f̶t̶w̶a̶r̶e̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶r̶e̶l̶e̶a̶s̶e̶ ̶i̶t̶ ̶u̶n̶d̶e̶r̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶t̶e̶r̶m̶s̶ ̶y̶o̶u̶ ̶w̶i̶s̶h̶ ̶i̶t̶ ̶h̶a̶d̶.̶ ̶ ̶h̶t̶t̶p̶s̶:̶/̶/̶c̶o̶d̶e̶.̶v̶i̶s̶u̶a̶l̶s̶t̶u̶d̶i̶o̶.̶c̶o̶m̶/̶l̶i̶c̶e̶n̶s̶e̶ ̶ ̶"̶Y̶o̶u̶ ̶m̶a̶y̶ ̶n̶o̶t̶.̶.̶.̶ ̶s̶h̶a̶r̶e̶,̶ ̶p̶u̶b̶l̶i̶s̶h̶,̶ ̶r̶e̶n̶t̶ ̶o̶r̶ ̶l̶e̶a̶s̶e̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶s̶o̶f̶t̶w̶a̶r̶e̶,̶ ̶o̶r̶ ̶p̶r̶o̶v̶i̶d̶e̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶s̶o̶f̶t̶w̶a̶r̶e̶ ̶a̶s̶ ̶a̶ ̶s̶t̶a̶n̶d̶-̶a̶l̶o̶n̶e̶ ̶o̶f̶f̶e̶r̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶ ̶o̶t̶h̶e̶r̶s̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶u̶s̶e̶.̶"̶ ̶ ̶A̶n̶d̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶y̶ ̶e̶v̶e̶n̶ ̶l̶i̶n̶k̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶i̶t̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶r̶e̶a̶d̶m̶e̶ ̶:̶)̶ ̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶c̶o̶u̶r̶s̶e̶ ̶i̶f̶ ̶t̶h̶i̶s̶ ̶i̶s̶ ̶a̶ ̶p̶i̶r̶a̶t̶e̶ ̶t̶h̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶n̶ ̶e̶v̶e̶r̶y̶t̶h̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶i̶s̶ ̶f̶i̶n̶e̶.̶ EDIT: thanks for pointing out that the license is not changed :)
- hiccuphippo 8y agoThat's the license for Microsoft's binary build. The source code is MIT and this build is from the source code.
- rootlocus 8y agoAccording to https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues/60#issuecomment-161792005 https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues/60#issuecomment-1... > The cool thing about all of this is that you have the choice to use the Visual Studio Code branded product under our license or you can build a version of the tool straight from the vscode repository, under the MIT license.
- detaro 8y agoThat's the license for the executable you download there, not the code.
- jakear 8y agoThe problem is they’ve taken a commit that was obviously made in error, and used that to justify the IP contained within that commit being MIT licensed. Sure, this might be legally sound. But it’s certainly scummy. Especially when you consider it’s acting against the wishes of the team that has been working hard over the past years to make a product loved by so many.
- ealhad 8y agoNice! I don't use VSCode, but I know a few people who do and I’ll gladly point them to this build.
- temp 8y agoDoesn't have the latest build for macOS. :(
- josteink 8y agoDisclaimer: general comment. Not affiliated with project, etc. I don’t know about you, but I don’t typically feel like shelling out $1000 to buy a machine specifically for an OS I don’t use, just to build a binary to non-paying users of free software. If Apple would provide easily installable ISOs for VBox/VMWare installations (or something equivalent), I might bother setting up a build for it. Right now it’s out of the question.
- filleduchaos 8y ago> but I don’t typically feel like shelling out $1000 to buy a machine specifically for an OS I don’t use I keep seeing this argument and it honestly just sounds rather lazy when a few seconds of Googling will point you towards build services you can use without having to purchase a Macbook (for instance, TravisCI has an OS X build environment). Or if you're opposed to cloud-hosted build tools for some reason you could ask users/the user requesting a macOS binary would mind working with you to test your build script(s) for compatibility and mention that Mac users will have to build from source in your README. This whole "well I would if Macs weren't so expensive" sounds like "I just don't want to support macOS" because you have options if you actually were interested.
- aikah 8y ago> This whole "well I would if Macs weren't so expensive" sounds like "I just don't want to support macOS" because you have options if you actually were interested. Mac development is a bit more complicated than running MacOS on a CI, especially with GUI apps. And of course code authors prefer compiling programs themselves on their infrastructure. If you want to volunteer and provide a Mac Build then get the source do it and distribute it. But don't accuse people of being somehow lazy for not supporting mac, that's preposterous. Apple is responsible for the situation. Don't shift the blame away from them.
- Waterluvian 8y agoI appreciate this effort and am not suggesting it's not necessary. Just curious: are there any known ill-desired effects of the MS binaries? My understanding is that it's just branding and telemetry that can be turned off.
- hegz 8y agoThey can't be distributed in distro package managers which usually require everything to be foss.
- majewsky 8y agoDepends on the distro. For the main Debian repos, it's true. Others like Arch are more lenient, e.g. Arch packages the Steam client.
- xfer 8y agoAre you sure arch distributes them? Like oracle jre, proprietary packages are downloaded during installation, i think debian non-free works similarly.
- ivanfon 8y agoIt's worth noting that VS Code is only available in the AUR: [visual-studio-code-bin](https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/visual-studio-code-bin/ https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/visual-studio-code-bin/): Original binary from Microsoft [code](https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/code/ https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/code/): Build from latest release source code [code-git](https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/code-git/ https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/code-git/): Build from latest Git commit The versions that build from source (`code` and `code-git`, AFAIK have telemetry disabled).
- duckerude 8y agoThe MS binaries are licensed in such a way that you're not allowed to redistribute them, if I'm interpreting https://code.visualstudio.com/license https://code.visualstudio.com/license correctly. There are some other legal restrictions. So those binaries are technically not FOSS, which means a lot of people won't use them out of principle, and it may even be a bad idea to mirror them.
- floatingatoll 8y agoIf I needed a one-time “use it and lose it” attack vector, this would be an excellent way to provide one. Imagine how many thousands of code repositories I could _successfully_ inject a backdoor into, using only a repackaged “without the telemetry” version of Microsoft’s code. Y’all are far too trusting. Edit: The point is that we all have a blind spot around risk assessment and threat evaluation when it comes to certain software topics, such as code editors and terminal software.
- TimTheTinker 8y agoNever trust a binary more than you trust the person who built it and the channel you downloaded it through. A better method might be to fork VSCode’s repo and modify the build scripts and/or code to remove telemetry.
- hsribei 8y agoThe repo has the scripts that are used to compile the binaries. It's not even a fork, it just downloads the code directly from the official repo.
- floatingatoll 8y agoGentoo’s biggest failure to me is in persuading people that building from source is somehow safer than binaries. Never trust a source code repository more than you trust the people who commit it and the channel you downloaded it through. Autoupdates from a source repository that you don’t review before accepting updates are no safer than autoupdates from a binary source.
- craftyguy 8y ago> Gentoo’s biggest failure to me is in persuading people that building from source is somehow safer than binaries. I don't think this is a big reason Gentoo users use Gentoo. At least not the knowledgeable ones.
- 8y ago
- amanzi 8y agoThis just creates more problems than it solves. If you don't like Microsoft's approach to VS Code you're better off choosing another editor to use - there are lots to choose from.
- PascLeRasc 8y agoThanks for doing this. This will be the canary that tells us whether Microsoft is really changed like they claim. Since they call themselves "in love with open source" [1] and letting Github "remain an open platform" [2], I expect them to not remove this project from Github. If they do remove it, whatever reason they give about wanting to provide the best possible VSCode experience is bullshit and Github will no longer be a home for open-source projects. [1] https://info.microsoft.com/rs/157-GQE-382/images/Microsoft-loves-Linux.pdf https://info.microsoft.com/rs/157-GQE-382/images/Microsoft-l... [2] https://open.microsoft.com/2018/06/07/github-acquisition-microsoft-commitment-open-source-developers/ https://open.microsoft.com/2018/06/07/github-acquisition-mic...
- nojvek 8y ago"You can recover from Microsoft and its suppliers only direct damages up to U.S. $5.00. You cannot recover any other damages, including consequential, lost profits, special, indirect or incidental damages." Lol Microsoft! why a random $5 number?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- binomialxenon 8y agoNo way would they risk the backlash of taking this down. It wouldn't come close to taking 1% of VS Code non-libre downloads, and as the source code is free software, there is zero legal reason for MS to take it down.