this post was submitted on 28 Feb 2026
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Privacy
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Tell me how you really feel 😅
They also own Visual Studio Code, control VSCode, and effectively control the VSCodium soft fork.
Did something happen with Codium or do you just mean in general due to controlling extension marketplace, access to their closed source ones etc.
Edit: missed your other comment, never mind
This is why you use Emacs, Kate, Neovim and so on. Never understood how anyone could use a software as confusing as VSCode.
It feels like people are just punching themselves in the face.
Yes, Microsoft has taken over a lot of projects which made coding easy. So either you submit to Microsoft's control or you spend the time to learn to use the alternatives.
Emacs is basically older than computers, stable and has a huge amount of support and plug-ins. Nvim is newer, but vi/vim have existed since before electrons learned to jump bandgaps and has a similarly deep level of community expertise/support.
If you're just starting off, your school is likely deep in Micrsoft's sphere of influence so you probably learned VS Code/Visual Studio. Moving to Emacs or Nvim is much harder than it would be if you had learned them in the first place, but believe me (a random stranger on the Internet wouldn't lie to you!) it is worth the time to learn.
This is why I use Zed as an alternative with the added upside that Zed runs about 500x better than VSCode
They decided they wanted to own software development and here we are ;/
Fuck ms
What do you mean about VSCodium? Obviously it's just a differently compiled version of Microsoft's text editor, but what does Microsoft have to do with it, otherwise?
it's effectively the same as chrome vs chromium. google/microsoft invests the resources to develop it, and someone simply comes and forks it without the closed source parts or telemetry.
which is fine, but means they still get to dictate how the software works. the best real world example i have is chrome and adblockers, or google-made web "standards".
Yeah. Your example: How many forks of Chome/Chromium have rejected Google’s Manifest v3 changes? Zero, because they’re all soft forks and don’t have the resources to hard fork.
“Otherwise” is doing Herculean lifting here when the code is nearly 100% Microsoft. The way they control it is by changing VSCode’s code, which is then dutifully incorporated into VSCodium, with the exception of telemetry code.
VSCodium has never promoted itself as anything more than a compilation of VSCode's base with telemetry disabled and proprietary components, naturally, not included. It has never promised anything else than that. Of course the changes are "dutifully incorporated" into Codium. It's not a point of that project to be different. Your first remark made it seem like Microsoft has somehow infiltrated the VSCodium project and changed what it does.
I keep Zed and, ideally Lapce, on my system and use them where possible. VsCode is my backup.
You dont need hardware verifications with vscode, nor an account, it works with a vpn, u can disable copilot.
Those aren’t the types of control I alluded to, as you can see upthread.