VS Code, the text editor, is a trojan horse. Microsoft is selling you into the IDE, in small portions. This is similar to the IBM approach with JAVA last decade(s?). You install a "text editor" for simple things, like code completion. Before you realize you don't even know which compiler you are using or where it came from. You just press F5 and look at convenient break points. And somehow it only runs right on Azure…
You're right - it is a trojan horse and people are eating up the 'MS heart Open Source' PR. It's obvious when you look at what they're doing with language servers. They've replaced the open source Python language server with a closed source one. The C/C++ was always closed. Their remote feature and collaboration tools are also closed. They're slowly making people depend on MS services without even realising it. They…
So, what you're saying is that the absolutely enormous number of Python and C/C++ people can't produce a decent open-source plugin while tiny communities like the Rust folks can?
I don't like what Microsoft is doing here, but, let's be honest, the "open source community" has also spoken and what it has said is "We are a bunch of cheap, selfish jerks."
You don't have to fund very many programmers to create these plugins. Full-time funding for maybe 5 or 6 programmers per plugin can pull it off (and maybe not that for something like the remote development plugin). And not all programmers around the world cost $200K per year. However, even if they did, that's $1 million per year to support a plugin.
So, no company or individual out of the entire Python or C/C++ ecosystem thinks that's a worthwhile expense? No group of 5 or 6 companies think that's a worthwhile expense?
As we found with OpenSSL and other open source projects, no, apparently they don't.
Don't bemoan Microsoft's licensing when the problem sits with the "open source community" being cheap bastards.