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Comment by stephc_int13 | Hacker News Reader

I tend to agree with this type of stance against corporate ownership.

Simply because ownership is power. Power in the hands of individuals is harmless as it is mostly Brownian motion; on the other hand, power in the hands of huge corporations (or governments) can turn nasty very quickly.

This is the reason I stopped using VSCode even if the tool is very good.

Ownership is too important, with heavy long-term political consequences to be ignored or traded for short-term convenience.

Basically, anything running "in the cloud" or slowly converging to run there should be a red flag.

Without being paranoid or a luddite, you can do everything with mostly local-tech or at least diversified enough to avoid giving too much power to a single actor.

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> This is the reason I stopped using VSCode even if the tool is very good.

So you’re not going to use the tools that you think are the best and most productive and instead depend on the kindness of strangers volunteering in their free time?

And before you cite “Linux”, look at who the top contributors are - all corporations.

Yes and how deep down are you willing to do everything on your own and does it give you a competitive advantage - ie “does it make the beer taste better”?

There have been great FLOSS dev tools for decades—it's one of the few areas with "an embarrassment of riches." Other areas so-so, but dev tools are top notch and ubiquitous.

Definitely one area we don't have to compromise principles.

It's also important how its distributed, if in a main distribution at least a pair of eyes or two have looked at the source.

The dev tools that are not developed or supported by a for profit corporation that are “top notch” are not “great”

Richard Stallman once said he'd rather use software that was slightly less good over non-free software.

If you think this is insane or don't understand the viewpoint, I refer you to the fable of the wolf and the dog. https://fablesofaesop.com/the-dog-and-the-wolf.html

I would rather refer you to the reality of the starving developer.

I don’t know about you. But I can’t seem to kick my addiction to food and shelter.

The best method based on my experience and talents that I know how to adequately feed my addiction is by exchanging my labor doing software development for money.

> I don’t know about you. But I can’t seem to kick my addiction to food and shelter.

Which is why it's all the more important for those of us who can afford to be principled to do so.

I use Sublime Text over VSCode, a paid tool, and I am glad to pay for it as I use it something like 8-10 hours every day. The licence is $80 and can last for years and the tool is very high quality.

The answer is not always open source, even if I think that the contribution of open source to the overall ecosystem is both positive and invaluable, as it clearly empowers individuals.

The dangerous trend is concentration of everything. We don't have to use every services from Google or Apple etc.

I only use Google Maps from Google, nothing else. I use iOS from Apple, but I barely use my phone these days.

We need more diversity to have less corporate control, increase healthy competition and mitigate the political risks.

>before you cite “Linux”, look at who the top contributors are - all corporations.

That is true but no single corporation has control of Linux. Linux (the kernel) has managed to harness corporations to fund developers so they can work full time on it without giving said corporations "editorial control" over Linux.

Individual corporations that pay Linux developers have some influence over the type of things that are worked on (by paying people that specialise in some parts of the kernel over others) but they don't get to decide what actually goes into the mainline kernel.

Unfortunately the same isn't true of most languages where there is often a single corporation behind it.

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