Strips Microsoft telemetry and proprietary blobs from VS Code. Community-built binaries.
Visual Studio Code is a source code editor developed by Microsoft, built on the Electron framework. The vscode repository is MIT-licensed, but Microsoft's official binaries include telemetry, proprietary extensions marketplace integration, and are distributed under the Microsoft Software License. VSCodium builds the same source code without these additions, producing functionally identical binaries under the MIT license.
Here's a fun riddle: when is open source not open source? When it's Visual Studio Code. Microsoft's enormously popular editor is built from the 'vscode' repository on GitHub, which is MIT-licensed. But the binaries you download from code.visualstudio.com? Those are built with a proprietary Microsoft license, baked-in telemetry, and connections to Microsoft's extension marketplace. It's open source with an asterisk — and a big one.
The disconnect was first flagged in a GitHub issue back in November 2015, but it took until 2018 for someone to do something about it. The VSCodium project created a set of build scripts that clone Microsoft's vscode repository, build it without the proprietary product.json overlay, and distribute the resulting binaries under the original MIT license. No telemetry. No Microsoft branding. No proprietary license. Just the code, as the repository promises.
As a Microsoft VS Code maintainer once explained, when Microsoft builds VS Code internally, they 'lay down a customized product.json that has Microsoft specific functionality (telemetry, gallery, logo, etc.)' and produce a build under their license. When you build from the repo yourself, you get a clean build. VSCodium simply automates this clean build process and distributes the result.
VSCodium has become the go-to choice for developers who want VS Code's editing experience without Microsoft's data collection. It's available in most Linux package managers and has a dedicated following among privacy-conscious developers. The main trade-off is that some VS Code extensions are restricted to Microsoft's marketplace and won't install on VSCodium, though the project maintains its own Open VSX marketplace integration as a workaround.
GitHub issue filed noting VS Code download license differs from repository license
VSCodium project created, automating builds of VS Code without Microsoft telemetry
VSCodium gains significant adoption among privacy-focused developers
Open VSX marketplace launched as alternative to Microsoft's extension marketplace
VSCodium exposed a practice that has become increasingly common in open source: the 'open source core, proprietary distribution' model. By demonstrating the gap between VS Code's open source repository and its proprietary binaries, VSCodium forced a broader conversation about what 'open source' means when the binaries users actually download contain proprietary components.
The project also validated the viability of 'clean build' forks — projects that don't modify the source code but simply compile and distribute it differently. This model requires minimal maintenance compared to traditional forks, since the upstream code is used as-is. VSCodium showed that sometimes the fork isn't about the code at all; it's about the build pipeline and distribution.