[sbuttgereit]

Yeah... My first thought was, OK... they've just forked VS Code without really saying they did. Digging a bit it seemed that wasn't the case, but the marketing message that "this is VS Code just without Microsoft" would seem to be strong enough as to cause real marketplace confusion.

[kiliancs]

It's not really a fork. They reuse things like Monaco, but other than that they reimplement most things, like plugin compatibility. In fact, they started with an API and later implemented the same API as vscode. I'd say it's more like a clone.

I was very excited about theia because you could run it as a web server, meaning I could develop with a complete IDE (ideal for TypeScript development) from anywhere, without the code ever leaving a certain network.

This didn't work all that well when I tried it because it wasn't 100% compatible with vscode extensions yet (for example couldn't get vim keybindings), but I was able to use for a couple weeks during a trip and I got things done.

Now that vscode allows working over ssh and other solutions, I don't see a need for an alternative. I can work remotely with the exact same thing as from my main workstation.