Ask HN: Is VSCode Open Source? What's with the License?

2 points

4 years ago

I've recently switched from Emacs to VSCode and I've recently been looking at VSCode Development Environments and their more recent VSCode Server offering / Remote Development Environments (https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/remote/vscode-server)

I thought wow, how cool, I could run VSCode Server on one of my remote servers or use SSH with Remote Development (which sets up VSCode Server for you and tunnels it I believe.) and edit remotely.

What's super concerning is the license term for VSCode Server (https://code.visualstudio.com/license/server):

You cannot...

host, share, publish, rent or lease the software; or

But I'm pretty sure Remote Development extension installs and runs VSCode Server for you (which means hosting the software.), essentially setting you up to break the license and open your organization to legal trouble since you're now hosting VSCode Server...

Holly molly, there's currently 13,462,303 users using the Remote - SSH extension, all of them breaking the licensing terms of VSCode Server?

5 comments

5 comments