> The big issue here is that Microsoft has an internal struggle going on at the moment. On one hand they want to be seen as a new version of Microsoft who loves Open Source, but on the other hand they want to actively block advances in OSS projects like the .NET SDK which could undermine their own commercial offerings.
For years, the narrative has been that MS doesn't want to give away their tools for free because they don't want to undermine the commerical offerings of their ecosystem. There used to be a ton of companies making development tools, components, and so on. Microsoft mostly made money with Windows, Office, and so on, so they could give away their own tools almost for free (but preferred not to in order to keep the vibrant ecosystem running). It is really odd that anybody at MS cares about whether VS or VS code or an external tool is more popular.
Also this whole infighting between departments seems to be contaproductive. If I were top level management, I would tell people to get their shit together. If instead of working together to make the best products possible, a manager tells off an employee for working on the C# extenstion for VS (because it hurts his personal goals) I would at the very least reprimand the manager. That VS code has poor .NET support, or for another example that MS graphical toolkits have so much churn and they don't use them themselves, are really embarrasing mistakes. I'm sure people have been fired for lesser problems...
In 2000, I worked at a web company that was a “Platinum Partner” with MS, and we did a lot of consulting work with them for various large clients. Me and another guy were invited to come out to learn about this new platform that MS was building called “Cool”, which was the internal name for c# at the time, and the early forms of .NET.
While we were there, Scott Guthrie (I’m 99% sure it was him) was supposed to lead us in some discussion but wasn’t there, and someone filled in for him. We learned later it was because he had been called into Bill G’s office and got dressed down a bit because Scott had basically created his own version of Apache web server to use within the dot net tools. It was rudimentary and temporary, but the reason he did it was because he had been trying for months to get the IIS team to give him a version of their server for use within the dot net dev tools, and they just kept putting him off. So he went around them and built his own. They found out, went up the chain, and Scott got dragged into the office to be told to cut it out and work with them instead.
Granted, this is 20 years ago, so my memory might not be as crisp, but it stuck with me as a lesson that Microsoft was not a single company, but like 10-15 different little companies, and they competed among themselves as much as they worked together. And as OSS was coming up at the time I thought, “they have no chance to survive what’s coming.”
In a .NET Rocks episode there is a guest that recalls his team using him as means to get information, because he was an external contractor, and it was easier for him to get the required information from another team, than having both teams talking directly.
> Microsoft was not a single company, but like 10-15 different little companies, and they competed among themselves as much as they worked together.
This is true for probably most – if not all – companies above a certain size. In my experience it really takes off at about 100 people, and it gets worse from there. My armchair psychology take is at that level you no longer know everyone in the company personally and "cliques" begin to form.
It has always like that, that is why we lost Managed DirectX, XNA, .NET Native, C++/CX, the Longhorn failure, MAUI vs Forms vs WPF vs WinUI vs UWP vs Blazor.
I am not affected by this as licensed VS user, but I also don't like how this story has been playing, and join my voice to those complaining how this was handled.
For years, the narrative has been that MS doesn't want to give away their tools for free because they don't want to undermine the commerical offerings of their ecosystem. There used to be a ton of companies making development tools, components, and so on. Microsoft mostly made money with Windows, Office, and so on, so they could give away their own tools almost for free (but preferred not to in order to keep the vibrant ecosystem running). It is really odd that anybody at MS cares about whether VS or VS code or an external tool is more popular.
Also this whole infighting between departments seems to be contaproductive. If I were top level management, I would tell people to get their shit together. If instead of working together to make the best products possible, a manager tells off an employee for working on the C# extenstion for VS (because it hurts his personal goals) I would at the very least reprimand the manager. That VS code has poor .NET support, or for another example that MS graphical toolkits have so much churn and they don't use them themselves, are really embarrasing mistakes. I'm sure people have been fired for lesser problems...