Therefore, you generate a “clean” build, without the Microsoft customizations, which is by default licensed under the MIT license When you clone and build from the vscode repo, none of these endpoints are configured in the default product.json. We clone the vscode repository, we lay down a customized product.json that has Microsoft specific functionality (telemetry, gallery, logo, etc.), and then produce a build that we release under our license. When we build Visual Studio Code, we do exactly this. According to this comment from a Visual Studio Code maintainer: It’s worth noting that if you don’t want to wait for Microsoft to open the private preview to more users, there are also startups like Coder that can provide you with a remote Visual Studio Code environment.Microsoft’s vscode source code is open source (MIT-licensed), but the product available for download (Visual Studio Code) is licensed under this not-FLOSS license and contains telemetry/tracking. Frankly, given the name, a lot of people probably always assumed that Visual Studio Online was a web-based version of the integrated development environment, only to be then disappointed that it wasn’t. Last year, the company renamed it to Azure DevOps, leaving the name open for other uses. Not that long ago, Visual Studio Online was Microsoft’s hub for all things DevOps, before DevOps was a buzzword. The emphasis here is on Visual Studio Online being a “companion.” It’s not meant to become a developer’s default environment but instead as a way to make a quick edit, review a pull request or join a Live Share session.Īnd if you think the name Visual Studio Online sounds familiar, that’s because Microsoft is actually recycling this name. Support for IntelliCode, Microsoft’s tool for AI-assisted development that became generally available today, is also built-in.

This means Visual Studio Online will also support all the extensions that are currently available for Visual Studio Code, as well as popular features like Visual Studio Code workspaces. The service is based on the Visual Studio Code, Microsoft’s popular free and open-source desktop code editor. Microsoft today announced the private preview launch of Visual Studio Online, an online code editor the company is positioning as a companion to Visual Studio and Visual Studio Code.

Visual studio online code editor