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This has been known for nearly two years now[1], and was talked about here a few months ago[2]. VSCode also downloads code from MicroSoft servers during the build process and won't build without an Internet connection. I'm pretty sure someone had forked VSCode like ungoogled-chromium but I can't find the repository. [1] https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues/17996 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17346492
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The license forbids you to reverse-engineer, so how would you find out without breaking the license?
Come on, nobody is preventing anyone from running the binary with strace or with wireshark open and comparing it to a version compiled from their sources. It's absolutely something which would've been relevant in a post like this one.
Is there any technical evidence that Microsoft is doing something suspicious with the binaries? Differing hashes? Weird network traffic? Binary de-compilation? Its not hard to find evidence if you've got a hunch, instead of publishing a fear piece like this.
The license forbids you to reverse-engineer, so how would you find out without breaking the license?
I still don't get the love ( real or manufactured ) for VS Code. There are far better tools to use on linux. On windows, you should use visual studio. VS Code doesn't make much sense unless you want to install additional spyware. It's funny to see people say how "light" VSCode is when they use it as a glorified notepad for a few days. Then they install more and more extensions and then slowly VS Code evolves into Vis…
I don’t code all day, so it’s a good drop in editor that doesn’t require paying a license, but has more functionality than vim.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What it gains is the ability to include some proprietary bits, including their branding, the extension system, and the option to send telemetry back. Just the same reason that the chrome binary isn't open source. Though MS doesn't make it's money on personal information, so the telemetry part is much more restricted.
>telemetry part is much more restricted Are you saying that Microsoft is collecting less information than Google would in the same situation? I find that very hard to believe looking at Microsoft's history. Do you have anything to back it up? The only comparison I can come up with is Windows 10 versus ChromeOS.
"We generate revenues primarily by delivering relevant, cost-effective online advertising." For the quarter ending June 2018, google advertising revenues were $28,087 million, out of $32,657 million total. That's 86% of their total revenue, for those keeping score at home.
Here's the relevant section of Microsoft's financial statement for the same time period. Advertising revenue is $6,100 million, out of $36,400 million. That's 17%. Microsoft doesn't even include the figure as a sub-line item, because their money makers are Azure and Office 365.
I understand that MS has a history of being the great opponent to software freedom. I understand that they've made moves that are anti-developer, and anti-customer in some ways. But their business model has never been based on collecting information. It was based on selling licenses, and now it's based on paid PaaS and SaaS.
With that in mind: it's hard to compare giant, decades-old corporations like this. We will inevitably come up with an incomplete list of anti-privacy things that both have done. But the profit motive lines up pretty clearly here.
But because I can't resist... google privacy issues have a wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privacy_concerns_regarding_Goo... . There is no analogous page about Microsoft privacy issues.
[1] https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1652044/000165204418...
[2] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/Investor/earnings/FY-2018-Q4...