Comment by injidup | Hacker News Reader

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Comment by injidup | Hacker News Reader

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They don't just state "built on open source" as an obscure deceptive slogan. They clarify quite clearly what it means.

https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/supporting/faq#_what-does...

This clarification has been there since at least 2020 https://web.archive.org/web/20200531093348/https://code.visu...

And slighting different wording but also clear has been there earlier.

You may not like the non open source license but it is not deceptive. It clearly states what it is.

Why use such a slogan at all, if you need to explain what you mean elsewhere? It's sketchy.

The slogan is true and useful to know. If I don't know anything about VScode and I land on the page and I see that it's built on open source I would find that interesting. If I was a reasonable person the first thing I would do is then read further and find out more about the project. I would find that most of the code is released under MIT and that the release build from microsoft has other proprietary modules attached. I could then delve deeper and make a rational decision as to whether this tool is suitable for my project or business.

The first thing I would NOT do is get on hacker news and bitch about how the project is being deceptive and evil. That is just lazy and entitled thinking.

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