Menu license links to non Open Source license #60
Description
I've just downloaded it:
Version 0.10.1
Commit df352367df2efcfa9d602d471e4e2f42140a0f05
Date 2015-11-17T15:21:23.766Z
Shell 0.34.1
Renderer 45.0.2454.85
Node 4.1.1
The license link points to non Open Source license:
https://code.visualstudio.com/license#vscode
For example:
[...] users cannot opt out of data collection [...]
You may not
* work around any technical limitations in the software;
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chrisdias commentedon Nov 21, 2015
This is correct. VS Code the product has a different license than the code in the repository.
hartwork commentedon Nov 21, 2015
@chrisdias, could some clarification be added to that page?
Also, what's the difference between the product and the source code?
Please re-open this ticket.
jangelfdez commentedon Nov 22, 2015
So, If we get the code from the repo is OSS but if we get the executables they aren't, isn't it? It makes no sense at all :S
alexandrev commentedon Nov 22, 2015
+1 to reopen and talk about this issue. I hope this is a 'bug' and not a decision because it makes no sense at all.
lontivero commentedon Nov 22, 2015
+1 to reopen it. This is not clear enough.
chrisdias commentedon Dec 3, 2015
Thanks for the interest in this topic and I apologize for not commenting sooner, I’ve been on vacation and just getting through my backlog. Let me try to provide more details behind our thinking here.
When we set out to open source our code base, we looked for common practices to emulate for our scenario. We wanted to deliver a Microsoft branded product, built on top of an open source code base that the community could explore and contribute to.
We observed a number of branded products being released under a custom product license, while making the underlying source code available to the community under an open source license. For example, Chrome is built on Chromium, the Oracle JDK is built from OpenJDK, Xamarin Studio is built on MonoDevelop, and JetBrains products are built on top of the IntelliJ platform. Those branded products come with their own custom license terms, but are built on top of a code base that’s been open sourced.
We then follow a similar model for Visual Studio Code. We build on top of the
vscodecode base we just open sourced and we release it under a standard, pre-release Microsoft license.The cool thing about all of this is that you have the choice to use the Visual Studio Code branded product under our license or you can build a version of the tool straight from the
vscoderepository, under the MIT license.Here's how it works. When you build from the
vscoderepository, you can configure the resulting tool by customizing theproduct.jsonfile. This file controls things like the Gallery endpoints, “Send-a-Smile” endpoints, telemetry endpoints, logos, names, and more.When we build Visual Studio Code, we do exactly this. We clone the
vscoderepository, we lay down a customizedproduct.jsonthat has Microsoft specific functionality (telemetry, gallery, logo, etc.), and then produce a build that we release under our license.When you clone and build from the
vscoderepo, none of these endpoints are configured in the defaultproduct.json. Therefore, you generate a "clean" build, without the Microsoft customizations, which is by default licensed under the MIT license (note, i made this commit to help make this more clear).I hope this helps explain why our Microsoft branded Visual Studio Code product has a custom product license while the
vscodeopen source repository has an MIT license. Last, I apologize for the fact that the naming of “Visual Studio Code”, “VS Code” and thevscoderepository are so similar, I think it contributed to the confusion.Chris
SteveALee commentedon Dec 5, 2015
@chrisdias Thanks for explaining.
It would be good to ensure any differences other than Branding / telemetry are clearly documented. At least we don't need to be concerned that this is a 'bait and switch' manoeuvre as the branded version is free :)
chrisdias commentedon Dec 7, 2015
@SteveALee You can look at the
product.jsonthat is installed with the Visual Studio Code product to see what we configure.SteveALee commentedon Dec 7, 2015
Hah, of course. Thanks.
16 remaining items
jsolisu commentedon Oct 22, 2016
¿Can we modify the product.json file on "Code OSS" without restriction acording to MIT License?
veeara282 commentedon Apr 20, 2017
@chrisdias With all due respect, this sounds like an argumentum ad populum: since other companies are re-licensing their open-source apps under proprietary EULA's (case in point: Oracle, Google, and JetBrains), we should do it too. You distribute this software free of charge, and adding a custom look and feel and extension gallery doesn't seem to justify re-licensing it in this way. As a counterexample, both the source and binary distributions of Atom come with the package manager and are released under the MIT License. What gives?
Clarifying README