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by vezycash 2152 days ago
Google does the same or even worse with "open source" Android and chrome.
1 comments

Exactly. And it's important to write articles like this about VSCode, Android, Chrome, and any others engaging in this (increasingly common) marketing approach.
And users can help by actually using VSCodium, LineageOS, Linux distro Chromium builds, non-Xcode clang, etc. instead of the proprietary variants.
Which the large majority chooses not to, so there you have it, the open source dream.
On the other hand, Safari's WebKit being open source allowed Google to build Chrome on the same engine. Years later, Chrome's Blink engine being open source meant the same for Opera, Brave, and Edge.

It is hard for individuals to run and maintain custom forks, but the benefits of open source in terms of preventing lock-in are substantial.

The same WebKit that now breaks the mobile Web and it being open source is completely irrelevant.
That Apple locks down iOS very tightly is a separate problem.

WebKit on Mac continues to be usefully open source, and I believe performance improvements that Apple has made for Mac Safari have been incorporated into Firefox, Chrome, etc.