Mistral Code

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Product clarity and availability

  • Several commenters couldn’t tell from the landing page whether Mistral Code is a CLI, IDE plugin, or standalone IDE; the VS Code extension link is buried and then leads back to “enterprise only.”
  • The official FAQ confirms: Mistral Code is currently a premium feature only available to Enterprise customers with an active agreement and allocated “seats.”
  • Many developers say they’d like to try it personally but are blocked by the enterprise gate, making the HN launch feel pointless for them.

Enterprise-only and “contact us” pricing

  • Strong pushback on “contact us” pricing, especially with a form asking for company size and revenue; some call it “dead on arrival” for individual developers and small companies.
  • Others argue this model is standard and effective for high-ticket enterprise software, where deals are in the tens or hundreds of thousands and require contracts, security reviews, and ongoing relationship management.
  • There’s debate over whether bespoke pricing is primarily about value-based, complex deployments vs. extracting maximum money and filtering out “small potatoes.”

Target market and competitive context

  • Several infer Mistral is targeting large, compliance‑sensitive orgs (e.g., EU banks) that need EU-hosted/self-hosted solutions and are wary of US providers.
  • Critics note Mistral’s models are not generally seen as SOTA and suggest that if they were, transparent pricing and self-serve trials would be easier to justify.
  • Others point out that Copilot (with free quotas), Zed+Ollama, and various open agents already provide similar or better experiences, often locally and cheaply.

Fork of Continue and open‑source monetization

  • The VS Code listing states Mistral Code Enterprise is a fork of Continue, with credit given.
  • Some say you can largely replicate Mistral Code by configuring Continue with Mistral models (e.g., Codestral/Devstral) and possibly fine‑tuning via Mistral’s API.
  • This triggers a broader discussion:
    • Monetizing Apache/MIT/BSD-licensed projects is legally fine; concerns are moral/economic, not legal.
    • Others recommend copyleft (GPL/AGPL), MPL, BSL, or dual licensing if you don’t want big companies to capture all the value.
    • There’s frustration that permissively-licensed projects get commercialized by better-resourced companies while original authors see little financial benefit.

Local vs hosted assistants and future of this niche

  • Some believe IDE assistants will trend toward “zero-cost and local” using open models and local runners; competition against that with locked-down, remote enterprise products may be difficult.
  • Others counter that many enterprises explicitly want managed, centrally controlled solutions and will accept “contact us” friction to get compliance, security, and support.