Which is basically an article to use an extension in a way that’s basically forbidden use.
If that was not bad enough the editor also told you to install certain extensions if certain file extensions were used that were also against the tos of the extension.
And basically cursor can just be using the vsix marketplace from eclipse, which does not contain restricted extensions.
What they do is at least shady.
And yes I’m not a fan of the fact that Microsoft does this, even worse they closed the source (or some parts of it) of some extensions as well, which is also a bad move (but their right)
The extensions themselves have licenses that prohibit their use with anything other than VSCode.
(You should keep this in mind next time someone tells you that VSCode is "open source", by the way. The core IDE is, sure, but if you need to do e.g. Python or C++, the official Microsoft extensions involved all have these kinds of clauses in them.)
I don't use VSCode (or Cursor in this case (which I do think was malicious in the way it blindly hallucinated a policy for a paying customer)); I use vim or notepad++ depending on my mood.
I just don't have a problem with people "violating" Terms of Service or End User License Agreements and am not really convinced there's a legal argument there either.
For distribution licenses, I would assume they have. Can't put GPL software in your closed source code, can't just download Photoshop and copy it and give it out, etc. And that makes sense and you have some reasonable path to damage/penalties (GPL → your software is now open source, Photoshop → fines or whatever)
But if you download some free piece of software and use it with some other piece of free piece software even though they say "please don't" in the EULA, what could the criminal or civil penalties possibly be?
I don't know what the hypothetical penalty would be for mere use contrary to EULA, though. It would be breach of contract, and presumably the court would determine actual damages, but I don't know what cost basis there would be if the software in question was distributed freely. However, fine or no fine, I would expect the court to order the defendant to cease using software in violation of EULA, and at that point further use would be contempt of court, no?
My current company uses Slack as the main messaging app, while still using Teams as part of the Microsoft package, for its integrations with Outlook and conference hardware and software. And this is a recurring pattern I've seen in other places. Teams is nowhere close to being a usable alternative to Slack.
Interesting, but isn't it just because Teams is bundled and integrated with MS Office? I couldn't find any specific stats on revenue or how many businesses actually choose to pay for Teams specifically.
Yes, AFAIK you can't even buy Teams separately, it's only bundled with MS 365. The DAU numbers, however, correspond to people actually online and using Teams for communications, so it doesn't really matter (if we only care about "how many users are using what").
Microsoft pushed Teams onto my personal Windows PC in a recent update, as a startup item. And, as far as I could tell, automatically logged me in to my Microsoft account on it.
It’s basically a vscode fork that illegally uses official extensions, that were not allowed to be used in forks.
Does "it" use the official extensions, or does it only allow "you" the user to use them?
First of all, their docs link to the market place of ms:
https://www.cursor.com/how-to-install-extension
Which is basically an article to use an extension in a way that’s basically forbidden use.
If that was not bad enough the editor also told you to install certain extensions if certain file extensions were used that were also against the tos of the extension.
And basically cursor can just be using the vsix marketplace from eclipse, which does not contain restricted extensions.
What they do is at least shady.
And yes I’m not a fan of the fact that Microsoft does this, even worse they closed the source (or some parts of it) of some extensions as well, which is also a bad move (but their right)
I don't see a problem with this. If it's an extension on my machine, why do I care about the TOS?
The extensions themselves have licenses that prohibit their use with anything other than VSCode.
(You should keep this in mind next time someone tells you that VSCode is "open source", by the way. The core IDE is, sure, but if you need to do e.g. Python or C++, the official Microsoft extensions involved all have these kinds of clauses in them.)
I don't use VSCode (or Cursor in this case (which I do think was malicious in the way it blindly hallucinated a policy for a paying customer)); I use vim or notepad++ depending on my mood.
I just don't have a problem with people "violating" Terms of Service or End User License Agreements and am not really convinced there's a legal argument there either.
I personally don't have a problem with that either, but as far as legalities go, EULAs are legally binding in US.
Have EULAs been tested in court?
For distribution licenses, I would assume they have. Can't put GPL software in your closed source code, can't just download Photoshop and copy it and give it out, etc. And that makes sense and you have some reasonable path to damage/penalties (GPL → your software is now open source, Photoshop → fines or whatever)
But if you download some free piece of software and use it with some other piece of free piece software even though they say "please don't" in the EULA, what could the criminal or civil penalties possibly be?
Yes, there were some cases that confirmed the validity of "clickwrap", unfortunately: https://www.elgaronline.com/edcollchap/edcoll/9781783479917/...
I don't know what the hypothetical penalty would be for mere use contrary to EULA, though. It would be breach of contract, and presumably the court would determine actual damages, but I don't know what cost basis there would be if the software in question was distributed freely. However, fine or no fine, I would expect the court to order the defendant to cease using software in violation of EULA, and at that point further use would be contempt of court, no?
Fair enough, that is quite unfortunate.
So I've always avoided using the Windows Store on my Windows machines, I think I managed to get WSL2 installed without using it lol.
So I'm not sure on the details, but do the steps on https://www.cursor.com/how-to-install-extension bypass clicking "I agree" since they just download and drag? Because from what I can tell, the example in https://www.elgaronline.com/edcollchap/edcoll/9781783479917/... is because the customer clicked "I agree" before installing.
Its different if you do it. Or if a public company is actively encouraging you.
The 1 million users + $200 million in revenue probably had something to do with the valuation.
Slack was a similar thing. IPO'd at 10 million users with 400M in revenue but got destroyed by Microsoft thanks to Teams.
Cursor is at a worse position and at greater risk of ending up like Slack very quickly and Microsoft will do the exact same thing they did to Slack.
This time by extinguishing (EEE) them by racing prices of VSCode + Copilot close to zero, until it is free.
The best thing Cursor should do is for OpenAI to buy them at a $10B valuation.
My current company uses Slack as the main messaging app, while still using Teams as part of the Microsoft package, for its integrations with Outlook and conference hardware and software. And this is a recurring pattern I've seen in other places. Teams is nowhere close to being a usable alternative to Slack.
Wait, what?! Slack got destroyed by Teams? You seem to be living a few parallel universes away from the one I'm in.
Yes, "destroyed" is apt. See the graph under "Slack vs Microsoft Teams: Users" here: https://www.businessofapps.com/data/slack-statistics/
Interesting, but isn't it just because Teams is bundled and integrated with MS Office? I couldn't find any specific stats on revenue or how many businesses actually choose to pay for Teams specifically.
Yes, AFAIK you can't even buy Teams separately, it's only bundled with MS 365. The DAU numbers, however, correspond to people actually online and using Teams for communications, so it doesn't really matter (if we only care about "how many users are using what").
It's sad but true that many orgs went from Slack to Teams due to Microsoft's monopolistic sales tactics. Sucks because now I use Teams every day.
Teams has 8 times the monthly active users.
Microsoft pushed Teams onto my personal Windows PC in a recent update, as a startup item. And, as far as I could tell, automatically logged me in to my Microsoft account on it.
I'd be very skeptical of their MAU claims.