Visual Studio Code is a massive gift to the community. If we take it in a different direction than Microsoft wants, that would be us doing what you are accusing them of. We can do what we want though. So can they. That’s Open Source!
It's not a tiny detail. ‘VSCode proper’ includes integration with the extension marketplace that everyone expects to use, as well as exclusive access to proprietary, Microsoft-backed extensions which are widely used throughout the VSCode userbase for essential functionality.
Microsoft has arranged things so that actual open-source builds of VSCodium will always be lacking in comparison to their proprietary product.
Oh, my apologies! I'm not tuned properly to pick up irony about that on HN since I've read so many posts overlooking the real difference. Hopefully my comment will be useful as a starting point to someone who hasn't really looked into the issue before.
The CoPilot thing is new and troubling.