VSCodium is a free/libre open source alternative to VS Code. While VS Code itself is free and open source (under the MIT License), Microsoft has licensed their binary releases under their not-so-FLOSS Microsoft Software License. You can read more about why this exists and access the project’s source on GitHub.
Excited to see this released on my newsfeed, so, thought I’d give it a share.
Interesting. I wasn’t aware Microsoft redistributed the binaries under their proprietary license. This reminds me of the Chrome vs. Chromium distinction.
Have you tried out VSCodium before? How does it compare to standard VS Code?
Looking into this particular situation, VSCodium is just building the from the same source, only, without the telemetry functionality and MS logo included. They include a quote from a current VS Code maintainer that says:
When we [Microsoft] build Visual Studio Code, we do exactly this. We clone the vscode repository, we lay down a customized product.json that has Microsoft specific functionality (telemetry, gallery, logo, etc.), and then produce a build that we release under our license.
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.
So it seems that it should be the same. I haven’t tried it out myself though.