O' What may man within him hide, though angel on the outward side!
Since the beginning of opensource ideology, Microsoft has been one of those companies that no one ever expected to join the cause.
Weirdly enough, They did! By making PowerShell opensource, and more important than that: by introducing Visual Studio Code to the world of programming. Microsoft vscode is one the fastest text editors out there and, thanks to its massive list of extensions, one of the best most-used IDEs in the world!
Let's thanks Microsoft, eh? Not so fast! Read this article first, as it might (and will) change your mind.
A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing
One of the main ideas of opensource, is that when you can see the code, your can see if the program tries stealing your data. You might not see any telemetry code in vscode's source code, but Microsoft adds telemetry code to it before compiling it (as mentioned here).
That's not a good thing, is it? So there came a community-driven version of vscode, called vscodium. Vscodium is freely-licensed binary distribution of vscode that does not have the telemetry part (and things like copilot).
Many of us programmers moved to vscodium, and were living freely there, until recently, when Microsoft did some evil moves against us.
Writing C/C++? NO MORE!
If you're a C/C++ programmer like me, then you're gonna need Microsoft C/C++ Extension in order for vscode to debug and help you write your code.
Since the version 1.24.5, which was released April 3, 2025, this extension is blocked on non-Microsoft products, meaning it's no longer available/installable on vscodium (or any other fork of vscode). It's get more interesting if I tell you that people tried forking this extension (which is opensource) and removing the check, but they found out that this extensions consists of opensource TypeScript code, and a few proprietary closed-source files (Read more here)!
💡 If you've faced this problem as I did, you can install and use clangd extension which is much faster and better than Microsoft C/C++ extension.
Access the Market? NEVER
Microsoft vscode's Marketplace is where you can find extensions, themes, etc. and basically it's what turns vscode from a simple text editor to a powerful IDE. A few weeks ago I noticed that marketplace has stopped working on vscodium, and as a result I can't install new extensions or update the ones I had already installed.
I did some research, and I realised it's not a bug, it's a new evil move from Microsoft. Marketplace is no longer accessible from non-Microsoft products like vscodium! And that was it! I moved to Neovim forever.
💡 You can still install extensions on vscodium using Open VSX Registry, which is an opensource project by Eclipse Foundation.
Final Words
Honesty is invaluable. If you want to create an opensource project, fine, but be real; If you want to create a proprietary project, still fine, but be real.
Open-Source is not a costume you wear when convenient, either wear it with honesty, or never wear it at all.
We will make a brighter future together, never doubt that.
Create. Love. Improve.
- A. Aryani
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