If you're like me and you've been happily using VSCodium (or maybe even Cursor, that cool AI editor) for your C/C++ projects, you might have hit a snag recently. Microsoft, in their infinite wisdom, decided to start enforcing the license terms on their official C/C++ extension for VS Code.
What's the Big Deal?
For a long time, even though the C/C++ extension wasn't officially in the VSCodium marketplace, we could just grab the .vsix file from Microsoft's GitHub and install it manually. It was a bit of a hoop to jump through, but hey, it worked! We got all those sweet IntelliSense and debugging features without the Microsoft telemetry.
But with the latest version (1.24.5), that's jover. Try to use it on VSCodium now, and you'll get a "nope, this is for official Microsoft products only" message.
Why the Sudden Change?
I wonders if it's related to tools like Cursor getting popular, maybe stepping on some AI toes. Microsoft says they're just enforcing terms that were always there. Their response to user complaints on the marketplace has been a bit... well, corporate: "Sorry you're upset we're enforcing our rules."
It's a bit frustrating because, while the extension source code is MIT licensed, the binaries we download have always had this more restrictive license. They just didn't bother checking until now.
So, What Now?
It's a good reminder that even with open-source foundations like VS Code, the ecosystem around it can have these proprietary catches.