> Because if it breaks, you can't fix it. If it reports on you, you won't know. If it decides to not allow SSHing into a server that it has blacklisted, you can't change it.

Are these the only reasons you have problem with it being closed source?

I'll happily use the closed source version when MS is developing who can handle 4 digit number of issues and likely to fix issues you care about and more.

If someone black lists your SSH server publicly, you seem to have a bigger problem than an extension being closed source.

I use neither Windows nor VS Code if I can avoid it -- I prefer slower progress than getting orders of magnitude more features ahead of time, for giving up control I consider fundamental, because I feel that I'm well served by the tools that are available in the open source space. I don't achieve theoretical maximum productivity without tools like VSCode and all the things they might provide and it hasn't been a problem in my career yet.

It's totally fine for other people to be fine with the trade off, but for me VSCode is an incremental gain, not a huge absolute one -- maybe it will have some killer feature (or more likely some partner/employer will force it on me because it's the current zeitgeist and because of some custom plugin) that I'll need someday, but that day is not today.

> If someone black lists your SSH server publicly

The bigger risk is that MS would start selling your usage without you even knowing, don't forget it's an advertising company as well.

If that were to happen, when someone inevitably found out, we'd be due compensation under the GDPR/the California law.

I would be OK with WSL being close-sourced, as long as the interface (including programmatic interfaces) to which you interact with it are open and documented.

Vendor lock-in is what i would see as bad-faith actor's action. A product being good should be the only lock-in required.

I'm curious, and please don't take this as an attack or sarcasm because it's not, it's a genuine question. Do you only use open source software? There is nothing close source on your machines?

I do not use only open source software, there's definitely closed source software on my machine, nvidia gfx drivers for example.

But I am also not a full on fanatic -- the world is gray, not black & white (for me at least). Since I am familiar with popular good open source tooling in this space, I'm surprised others who might feel the same might compromise at this particular junction, and that was my knee jerk reaction.

I pretty much agree with you and thank you for your answer.

no worries :)

I can't say I do as much for the F/OSS community as others out there do but I donate to the authors of the tools I use, the EFF, and Letsencrypt (the amount of value they deliver is insane) from time to time.

How is that worse than not having the extension at all?

People don't tend to build workflows around stuff that doesn't exist.