I interviewed with the VSCode team at Microsoft Zürich (didn't get the job because there were more senior candidates that already contributed to the open source repo, fair game). I have to say I'm super impressed that a small team in Switzerland managed to build and maintain it! Coming from that point of view it's imo totally okay that there are some proprietary parts. If it doesn't generate revenue in one way or another, we wouldn't have it. FOSS is cool and all but someone has to pay the devs eventually.
Your comment seems to suggest VSCode is mostly developed by a small team in Switzerland. VSCode is also significantly developed in Redmond (at the Microsoft HQ near Seattle).
Yes, Redmond got involved later due to the immense success. Doesn't take anything away from the fact that the core is being developed by a small team in Switzerland.
