Responding a second time as HN seems to have missed the relevant part from that link:
> "When you clone and build from the vscode repo, none of these endpoints are configured in the default product.json. Therefore, you generate a "clean" build, without the Microsoft customizations, which is by default licensed under the MIT license (note, i made this commit to help make this more clear)."
The difference is trademark files (which are handled by copyright not software licenses) and settings (likewise these are not licensed). Almost exactly like Red Hat Linux compared to CentOS. See https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues/60#issuecomment-1...
> "When you clone and build from the vscode repo, none of these endpoints are configured in the default product.json. Therefore, you generate a "clean" build, without the Microsoft customizations, which is by default licensed under the MIT license (note, i made this commit to help make this more clear)."