Theo in a video about some recent Visual Studio Code drama:

We have to remember the role of VS Code. VS Code was never, ever, ever meant to make money. Microsoft's plan with VS Code was at no point, "we're going to charge for this and make a money printing machine, selling extensions and doing all this other stuff." Microsoft never had a plan to make money on VS Code. If anything, it hurt their advantage with Windows because it was the first time they were supporting a good editor that worked well on Mac. It's when they started to try and smooth out the branding and relationship they had with the developer community.And it worked. It worked wonderfully. VS Code is one of the best examples of Microsoft caring about developers and the tools and technologies they need to ship. They wanted to be loved by devs again, and they have not really made decisions around VS Code to make money. They've made decisions around VS Code to make devs happy in hopes that long term they'll position Microsoft to make more money in the future.

A healthy reminder that it is possible for big companies to do things simply to win the hearts and minds of developers and it can be hugely successful. There is an alternative to, "you're lucky we let you use our platforms at all."