<story><title>The Future of the Gitlab Web IDE</title><url>https://about.gitlab.com/blog/2022/05/23/the-future-of-the-gitlab-web-ide/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>crabmusket</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s interesting to me that GitLab is adopting a Microsoft product (VS Code) and Microsoft owns a significant competitor in GitHub. Nothing intelligent to say about that other than to wish I&amp;#x27;d been a fly on the wall for the discussions about that.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Next, we asked ourselves the question: Do we want to continue to invest in implementing custom features for the Web IDE that ultimately deliver the same value as those already available in VS Code? Or do we embrace VS Code inside GitLab, and invest in extending the experience to more tightly integrate with GitLab and the DevOps workflow?&lt;p&gt;I feel like if asking myself those questions I&amp;#x27;d have come to the same answer, but it&amp;#x27;s certainly an interesting position. It&amp;#x27;s not necessarily that I think Microsoft will leverage this open-source project against GitLab. Maybe it just says something about Microsoft&amp;#x27;s increasingly-dominant position in developer tooling.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>eschurter</author><text>GitLab PM and author of the OP here.&lt;p&gt;It is an interesting position we find ourselves in and we had some lively discussions about it! I would like to note, though, that Monaco (which powers our current Web IDE) is ALSO a Microsoft project. So this isn&amp;#x27;t a change in strategy as it relates to using open source projects maintained by those that may be seen as competitors.&lt;p&gt;We have faith in the future of VS Code as an open source project but I&amp;#x27;ll also say that this isn&amp;#x27;t a one-way door. If things change in the future, we&amp;#x27;re not so heavily leveraged that we couldn&amp;#x27;t replace the Web IDE&amp;#x27;s underlying editor again.</text></comment>
<story><title>The Future of the Gitlab Web IDE</title><url>https://about.gitlab.com/blog/2022/05/23/the-future-of-the-gitlab-web-ide/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>crabmusket</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s interesting to me that GitLab is adopting a Microsoft product (VS Code) and Microsoft owns a significant competitor in GitHub. Nothing intelligent to say about that other than to wish I&amp;#x27;d been a fly on the wall for the discussions about that.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Next, we asked ourselves the question: Do we want to continue to invest in implementing custom features for the Web IDE that ultimately deliver the same value as those already available in VS Code? Or do we embrace VS Code inside GitLab, and invest in extending the experience to more tightly integrate with GitLab and the DevOps workflow?&lt;p&gt;I feel like if asking myself those questions I&amp;#x27;d have come to the same answer, but it&amp;#x27;s certainly an interesting position. It&amp;#x27;s not necessarily that I think Microsoft will leverage this open-source project against GitLab. Maybe it just says something about Microsoft&amp;#x27;s increasingly-dominant position in developer tooling.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>zarzavat</author><text>Microsoft may have a dominant position in developer tooling,  but they don’t have a monopoly. A well-funded team could create a compelling competitor to VS Code.&lt;p&gt;The issue is that there’s no money to be made duplicating the effort that has gone into VS Code when VS Code is open source. Even Google doesn’t seem to care about entering that space.</text></comment>