The point of using something like VSCode is access to all of the features enabled by proprietary extensions. VSCodium has none of these and goes back to being worse than vim.

Microsoft is just engaging in open source cosplay when they publish the source code. They’re not interested in software freedoms as a concept (in fact, they are interested in explicitly denying them to users) and they certainly aren’t interested in enabling software freedoms via their releases (source code or otherwise).