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0 pointsechelon10mo ago0 comments

It's absolutely remarkable that these folks are writing this from scratch in Rust. That'll be a long-term killer feature for the editor.

Do you think GPL3 will serve as an impediment to their revenue or future venture fundraising? I assume not, since Cursor and Windsurf were forks of MIT-licensed VS Code. And both of them are entirely dependent on Microsoft's goodwill to continue developing VS Code in the open.

Tangentially, do you think this model of "tool" + "curated model aggregator" + "open source" would be useful for other, non-developer fields? Would an AI art tool with sculpting and drawing benefit from being open source? I've talked with VCs that love open developer tools and they hate on the idea of open creative tools for designers, illustrators, filmmakers, and other creatives. I don't quite get it, because Blender and Krita have millions of users. Comfy is kind of in that space, it's just not very user-friendly.

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dotancohen10mo ago

  > entirely dependent on Microsoft's goodwill to continue developing VS Code in the open.

The premise of many open source licenses, including MIT, is that the user is _not_ dependent on the developer. No matter what MS does, the latest pulled version of VS Code will remain working and available. MS could license future VS Code versions under more restrictive licenses, however the Cursor devs can continue to use and themselves develop the code they already have.

To be clear, by "the user" I'm referring to the Cursor devs. This is the terminology of many F/OSS licenses.

pjmlp10mo ago

They are dependent to the extent they won't put in the work to make those extensions at the same level Microsoft was pumping resources into them.

In theory everyone can fork Chrome and Android, in practice none of the forks can keep up with Google's resources, unless they are Microsoft or Samsung.

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