Devs sound alarm after Microsoft subtracts C/C++ extension from VS Code forks Microsoft's C/C++ extension for Visual Studio Code (VS Code) no longer works with derivative products such as VS Codium and Cursor – and some developers are crying foul. In early April, programmers using VS Codium, an open-source fork of Microsoft's MIT-licensed VS Code, and Cursor, a commercial AI code assistant built from …
I am, in general, sceptical of AI bullshit, especially when applied to coding. But the alarm bells were ringing loud when my younger AI-credulous colleagues started proselytising for Cursor. For some kind of reason it couldn't be installed as an add-in to VS-Code despite being a "fork" of same.
Now we know why.
-A.
If you embrace a company branded programming language (especially a Microsoft branded language), you will, inevitably, be mule-kicked solidly in the crotch at some point.
You either accept the odd burst of ball-ache, or you find a more neutral choice that does what you need.
No-one can express surprise at this latest development. They are consistent AF in all of their product offerings and revoke features and functions as they see fit. You don't matter to them, unless you fail to make your monthly subscription payments. Then they give a damn about your 'relationship.'
Okay, I'll bite... how is this an example of either a broken promise or being "mule-kicked solidly in the crotch"?
Microsoft develop a code editor, which they release under a very permissive licence for no monetary cost. They also provide an extension to this editor, which is closed source, but again is available for free so long as you accept the licence terms. (Presumably so they can collect the telemetry in exchange for it's use).
Those terms, for the last 5 years, have prohibited running the extension against a fork of the editor, but haven't been enforced.
Additionally, a third party has allegedly been breaching these terms to enhance their own product. I.e. Not only are they taking the code developed by someone else as they're completely entitled to do by the licence that party used, but then they're also trying to have their cake and eat it too by taking the stuff they're not supposed to have, because attempting to profit off others work is fine when it's a big evil corporation??
So, explain to me how MS is at fault here? They've not removed the source code, or changed the terms of the extension in 5 years. The only 'promise' in effect is the terms of the licence, which they seem to now be enforcing.
If it was MS and they'd broken the GPL there would be hell to pay, why don't they get the same respect?
Or is their free software somehow not beholden to the same standards?
Just to be a pedant, there are several legal precepts that more-or-less state “if you fail to use or enforce these provisions for years, you can lose the right to suddenly enforce them to the detriment of someone else.” Domain squatting comes to mind, as well as patent troll legislation.
>Microsoft develop a code editor, which they release under a very permissive licence for no monetary cost.
Yes, but they did this because their code editor was based on the open source Atom editor (MIT licence).
Yes, this is how open source works I think. :)
They have also continued to licence it under the MIT licence, something which they do not have to do. (They could've closed sourced their modifications as the licence allows this, much as Apple does with some of their changes to FreeBSD).
Microsoft did not develop VS Code from scratch.
I didn't mean to imply they did, I'm sorry if I gave this impression.
It still doesn't change that Codium are breaking the licence terms though.
FIA: So, explain to me how MS is at fault here? They've not removed the source code, or changed the terms of the extension in 5 years. The only 'promise' in effect is the terms of the licence, which they seem to now be enforcing.
cow: This is simply untrue, the article says something quite different.
From the opening paragraph.
> Microsoft's C/C++ extension for Visual Studio Code (VS Code) no longer works with derivative products such as VS Codium and Cursor – and some developers are crying foul.
From paragraph 6:
Microsoft has forbidden the use of its extensions outside of its own software products since at least September 2020, when the current licensing terms were published. But it hasn't enforced those terms in its C/C++ extension with an environment check in its binaries until now.
(Emphasis mine).
You are correct though, I said 5 years, when I should've said 4 and a half. Apologies. :)
Visual Studio Community is free for individuals to develop commercial applications, and small companies (less than 250 PCs) can use up to 5 editions of it for free.
SQL Server express is free and usable in production. (I expect there's limitations, but I've not looked further).
I'm not sure why you'd expect Azure to be free, altough it does offer (like Amazon) a free tier for experimentation.
MS want to be the only ones in town providing shitty AI code helpers (and not inconsequentially sucking up all your code to feed into its LLMs), so kill the competition!
And man, remember when Nadella was a breath of fresh air after Ballmer? At this point, with him helming Win11 turning to complete shit and all this AI bullcrap, I fully expect to see him up on a stage soon, dancing and sweating like a pig while screaming 'AI developers! AI developers! AI developers!'
and he has never written a line of code professionally
Well, you are wrong.
https://www.economicclub.org/sites/default/files/transcripts/Economic_Club_Satya_Nadella_Transcript.pdf
"MR. NADELLA: I was a developer at Sun. I worked on, interestingly enough, a lot of their – when I joined Sun in the – in 1990, the ambition there was to be a desktop computer business. And so I worked, in fact, at Sun. I even spent a summer at Lotus doing a bunch of their software for the Sun workstations."
No idea why people went mad for VSC. MS already have a paid IDE, the only reason to for them to give it away was it was a huge trojan horse for something. Those who didn't take the bait are in the happy position of not being embraced and extended to be an AI datapoint. Those who did take the bait wilfully ignored years of MS history.
The short answer? It didn't smell like Microsoft, because they didn't make it. And Microsoft's marketing of being pro open source wireless on people who naively saw it as a contribution. Managers jumped on it too, and it was marketed to them as a way to keep developers on Windows.
They also give away their paid IDE, for "community" use, but it only runs on Windows. VS Code was part of the strategy of retargeting .NET to Linux and conveniently allowed the unloved stepchild, Visual Studio for Mac, to be booted into the wilderness.
I've really only used VS Code for Arduino and Pi Pico projects and it seems fine for that purpose, although it does rather remind me of the days of using DEC's Language Sensitive Editor on a VT100 back in the 1980s.
I'm a bit ambivalent about all-embracing development environments. It may be convenient to have one platform you can use for a whole variety of programming languages and configuration files, but the more generic your IDE becomes, the less well it seems to do individual jobs. Visual Studio seemed to hit a peak about 10 years ago and then started to become buggy and counterintuitive as more and more "productivity" features were shoveled into it. IDEs should be unobtrusive, but the trend, unfortunately, seems to be for them to constantly get in your face to tell you how helpful they are.
I think, on the whole, I'd prefer them to do less but to do it more reliably and predictably. And preferably with less dependence on a plethora of third-party plugins of unknown origin. While I'm extremely suspicious of AI, I can't help feeling it's no more of a threat than pulling code and tools from random corners of the Internet and hoping for the best.
Of course, if your code is to any extent important, you already have a plan for the case in which part or all of the development tooling is no longer available or the dependencies are no longer supported, so an event like this is something you simply take in your stride - at the cost of some effort. Right?
In my case it was because Adobe withdrew Brackets and recommended moving to the conceptually very similar VS Code.
When Brackets came out it was something of a revelation -- an editor that actually understood JavaScript! (Until then I was using Windows WordPad.) I guess that's not such a unique selling point these days.
-A.
Visual Studio is really great once you’ve set it up and you’re working on the same project and codebase and language (and language version) all the time. Back in the day it was like trying the thread a needle with loads of DLL options and very similar sounding options which all needed to be exactly correct. Maybe it’s better now, but I still fear it! Once you have it set up and it compiles and the stack tracing works you are winning, but it’s a fiddly process. Then switching to a different codebase with different language and different compilers, it’s a ball ache.
VSCode approaches this differently and in my opinion, is much easier and quicker to load up different languages, interpreters, linters, etc within the same project.
MS want to be the only ones in town providing shitty AI code helpers (and not inconsequentially sucking up all your code to feed into its LLMs)
Ok... so now we know why it's a 'shitty AI code helper'. Second-rate devs feed their second-rate code into the LLM. Crap in, crap out. Karma.
I've already written my rant about this situation where C++/Python/Typescript/C# extensions (I use all of them) no longer work on VSCode forks (https://forums.theregister.com/forum/all/2025/04/18/microsoft_copilot_not_wanted/). It is Microsoft at its best... a crappy shitty company with the same old behavior :-(
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Some short run profit taking for Microsoft, but in the long run they may lose out as interest grows in open source extensions and alternatives to VS code.
As for Cursor, sorry I cannot understand how they raised millions in VC money for a closed source fork of VSCode editor with the assumption that MS wouldn't do this. Let's see if some of that VC money starts getting funneled into building open source extensions to break the blockade (I would guess it won't).
Microsoft is just being Microsoft but this is cursors fault too. If Microsoft have in their license agreement that the extensions can only be used with VSCode then why were cursor finding workarounds and ways to hide that it was their IDE accessing the marketplace? Why are they still looking for workarounds?
They knew that what they were doing was against the license but in typical AI company fashion they don't care about licensing or copyright, they just do what they want. So yeah what Microsoft did isn't great but it was there in the license all along, it is just them enforcing it now. What cursor did however is to ignore the license and just do what they want whilst trying to hide that it was them and they are continuing to try and find ways to violate the license. I have no sympathy for cursor here.
If you haven't noticed yet, none of us care about cursor, it's just the latest example of sharecropping on Microsoft's porch, and it's closed. What we do care about is the impact on the developer community who has heavily adopted VSC for often bad reasons.
I don’t think anyone has a right to complain about MS here - and it’s been a VERY long time since I thought that. MS are enforcing their license. Which they are perfectly entitled to do. A license which, by the way, has not suddenly changed recently (at least not in relation to this). If you choose to use a software product that has a license that states quite clearly that this kind of thing might (or is likely to) happen then it is your own fault of things go pear-shaped. You have no right to blame MS. You might not like it and want to stamp your little foot, but you have no right to complain
As for using VSC, I also don’t “get it”. It’s a bit like the hoards of people that use the Crome browser. Just why??? If you want to edit code, use an editor. And learn how to invoke the compiler in the command line
If Microsoft have in their license agreement that the extensions can only be used with VSCode then why were cursor finding workarounds and ways to hide that it was their IDE accessing the marketplace?
This. It feels a lot like burglars complaining someone has fitted better locks.
I am sure many commentards here will have 'kicked the doors down' when it has suited them to do so, but I don't think many would be so stupid as to build a business reliant upon doing that or expect it to last.
Well that explains why some extensions work/available on Vscode and not Vscodium! Thought it was versioning differences. Well it's not a surprise that a corporation wants to restrict its products and lever usage. I am always suspicious of corporates getting involved in opensource products if they will ultimately damage the "open" or attempt to control.
Not sure about Cursor, tried it and didn't like it. Amazon Q seems to keep getting better and works in both Vscodium & Vscode. I also run open-webui + Ollama locally but not integrated, quicker than searching docs or online etc. Playing with a model called deepcoder at the moment which seems to include decent explanations which is handy if using as a manual / search for examples.
"One such developer who contacted us anonymously told The Register they sent a letter about the situation to the US Federal Trade Commission, asking them to probe Microsoft for unfair competition - alleging self-preferencing, bundling Copilot without a removal option, and blocking rivals like Cursor to lock users into its AI ecosystem."
Microsoft do not sell VS Code they license it “as-is" and it's free to use. Microsoft also open-sourced the code which allowed Cursor to fork and build their own version of the editor and add their own AI before Microsoft bundled Copilot.
So if you don't like what Microsoft does with VS Code just fork it and build your own version of VS Code. Also you don't have to use VS Code there are other IDEs out there. There's no unfair competition there.
Microsoft didn't open source the code, the original project was open sourced before they purchased it and they saw a strategic advantage in using this tool to rope in open source developers. It doesn't matter if they don't sell it, as they do control the integration platform.
If you want to claim this isn't a problem you would also have to grant Google the same leeway on Chrome, which courts have decided not to.
"The breaking change appears to have occurred with the release of v1.24.5 on April 3, 2025."
Quote from OA, emphasis mine.
If something like this had occurred in an emacs release, then the journalist would have been able to locate the exact commit that introduced the change, and would have been able to read the huge thread in emacs-devel where the change was argued about for weeks before, during and after the change.
People have to make their choices and compromises.
Microsoft is unable to sell any of its AI products despite exspending an enormous amount of marketing resources. There is like one guy, using an AI code assistant with C/C++. Does anyone really expect Microsoft to give up the one paying customer for C/C++ AI coding assistants without a fight?
"Microsoft Visual Studio, Visual Studio for Mac, Visual Studio Code, Azure DevOps, Team Foundation Server, and successor Microsoft products and services to develop and test your applications."
Nice splintering there.
I've said it before. M$ doesn't even work with itself.
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