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Comment by ezluckyfree | Hacker News Reader

Note that this feature doesn't work in open source builds of VSCode, it's an MS only thing.

I use this feature in VSCode (free version), with this Microsoft extension: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=ms-vscod...

I read about this fact elsewhere also. Could you expand on this a bit? My impression was that VSCode and its associated extensions are open source, so I'm curious how Microsoft could make certain parts exclusive to its own build of VSCode.

> I'm curious how Microsoft could make certain parts exclusive to its own build of VSCode.

By packaging it as an extension that isn't licensed like the rest of VSCode.

Also on a related note, if you're using an open source build of VSCode (such as VSCodium) then you cannot use marketplace.visualstudio.com/

https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium#extensions-and-the-mark...

You absolutely CAN use marketplace.visualstudio.com, you just have to break ToS.

Because VSCode is under a permissive license (MIT) rather than a copyleft license (GPL), Microsoft can add any proprietary extensions it wants. "Permissive" licenses are only permissive for the creator and other developers (only sometimes), not for the end user.

Since MS is the author, they could put it under GPL and still do this. They own the copyright.

In order to contribute you have to sign away your rights, so it's only permissive to MS. It's a pervasive view on open source, cheered by sockpuppets, making people believe MS is now a open source company.

The situation is similar to Google Chrome/Chromium: Most of it is open-source, but the release binaries contain some proprietary bits for telemetry, marketplace access, etc.

A FOSS build is available at https://vscodium.com/

I am no VS Code user, but if this is true, we are at phase 2 of EEE. What will be next?

Can't be at phase 2, because VS Code was written by MS.

Concepts can be embraced. The concept is not limited to a single product.

Eclipse foundation has a new project, Theia[1], which forks VSCode and one of the reasons they state is that the extension ecosystem is not opensource.

They want Theia to be a tool to build your own editor and it can be built as a hosted solution (like code-server) or a standalone editor

Edit: I see that the article also mentions Theia but this point about Theia vs VSCode is not mentioned.

[1]: https://theia-ide.org/

The beauty of open source. Take code written by others rename and call it an alternative to the original product.

I was very disappointed to find that VSCodium wasn't able to do this. It makes me consider switching back to VSCode.

VSCodium is able to do this, it is just more work.

https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium/blob/master/DOCS.md#pro...

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