[fortenforge]

Eh not quite. Famously, you can fork VSCode, but you can't use the VSCode Extension Marketplace if you do, which loses a lot of the network effect benefits of the VSCode ecosystem. (As far as I know Cursor is flat out violating Microsoft's terms of service with respect to the extension marketplace).

[throwup238]

And a lot of the licenses for flagship Microsoft VSCode extensions for languages like C/C++ and Python don't allow using them outside of VSCode/Extension Marketplace so open source forks are crippled by default.

[swiftcoder]

I believe this also blocks you from using Microsoft's proprietary language extensions, and they have been steadily switching the default language packages from OSS to proprietary.

[tristan957]

Yes. You famously cannot use the C/C++ language server bundled in the C/C++ extension or Pylance. Who knows what other development tools they will lock behind their fork to the detriment of open source communities. Also you can't use their Remote Extension suite.

[ghuntley]

Correct

[throw4950sh06]

OpenVSX. Again this is just the same as RHEL repos behind license login.

[tristan957]

Red Hat provides support for their packages. If you're not paying for support, you don't get access to the repos. That makes sense to me. What does Microsoft gain by creating a walled garden? They don't provide support. All that they provide is hosting. The Eclipse Foundation provides hosting for free for OpenVSX, which is an amazing service to the community of people using VSCode forks that aren't allowed to access the VSCode Marketplace. Microsoft should either relax the ToS on the Marketplace or acknowledge OpenVSX as the one and only marketplace for extensions.