Misleading Licensing, Please Clarify

[invy]

Dear vscode-cpptools developers, I have some difficulty to understand which license applies to which files in the repository.

0. The LICENSE Document here states:
   

   vscode-cpptools/LICENSE.md

   Lines 1 to 3 in 0de1534

   	Additional binary files are included in the official VSIX files built and
   	distributed by Microsoft; these are governed by the more restrictive proprietary
   	license terms found at [RuntimeLicenses](RuntimeLicenses).

1. Some source files have following License (clearly stating, they are under MIT) :
   

   vscode-cpptools/Extension/webpack.config.js

   Lines 1 to 4 in 0de1534

   	/*---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
   	* Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
   	* Licensed under the MIT License. See License.txt in the project root for license information.
   	*--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------*/

2. Others, however, not, reffering to the 'root' License:
   

   vscode-cpptools/Extension/src/main.ts

   Lines 1 to 4 in 0de1534

   	/* --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
   	* Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation. All Rights Reserved.
   	* See 'LICENSE' in the project root for license information.
   	* ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ */

3. Binary Image Files (png, svg):
   Which License applies to all those Icons.

It is not clear:

• Are those files, like in (2) under MIT oder Restrictive License? Logically, if they are referring to the 'root' License Information and they are not 'binary' Files one could imply they are under MIT? If so, please modify all such files, which are under MIT to state it clearly. If they are not under MIT, modify them accordingly.
• Which License applies to Files in (3).
• a) Are Extensions VSIX Files provided here on Github under Restrictive License or under MIT?
• b) Is the Source-Archive provided under Releases under MIT License or under Restrictive License.
• One would assume, that Source Archive provided with the Release is identical to the pre-built binaries and one could build the Extension themselves from the provided Source Archive and get identical VSIX Files.
• Is there a Recipe to Build MIT Only Part of the extension?

Please Note, this is not the Question but rather the Bug Report, because I see the 'bug' in the way, how the License Information is conveyed.

Followup:
I've build extension out of the Source Code, the resulting vsix Package does not contain Microsoft Binaries (cpptools, cpptools-srv, etc). Does this mean, the extension build from sources this way (e.g. using yarn) is licensed under MIT or does it still contain some Microsoft proprietary parts?

This however answers partly my question: Source Code and VSIX Files provider in Artifacts are in fact not identical. Building provided Source Code produces different artifacts.

It is not clear, again, from the provided License Documents.

[sean-mcmanus]

@invy I don't understand what you're confused by. The root license is the MIT license

vscode-cpptools/LICENSE.md

Lines 1 to 3 in 0de1534

	Additional binary files are included in the official VSIX files built and
	distributed by Microsoft; these are governed by the more restrictive proprietary
	license terms found at [RuntimeLicenses](RuntimeLicenses).

and applies to everything in the GitHub repo. The restrictive runtime licenses applies to the binaries and the vsix published on our Releases page which contain the binaries with the restrictive license included in it.

The vsix is built with vsce like all other VS Code extension -- did you have questions on how to use that?

If you build a vsix from the GitHub repo without the restrictively licensed binaries then it's covered under the MIT license.

What do you mean by "source code and vsix files provider in artifacts are in fact not identical" -- what is different? We build the vsix out of our insiders or release branches and not main.

All of this should be clear from our existing license documentation, so I'm not sure what would warrant additional clarification.

[invy]

If you build a vsix from the GitHub repo without the restrictively licensed binaries then it's covered under the MIT license.

@sean-mcmanus This answers most of the question, however it would be nice, if every source file, if it is under MIT license, had a corresponding entry.

What do you mean by "source code and vsix files provider in artifacts are in fact not identical"

Consider Assets:

Assets contain prebuilt vsix files and archived Source Code.
It is not clear, whether vsix files contain components, that are subject to the restricted license or not.
Or, another way around: I cannot take 'Source Code.zip', extract and build it, to produce, for example, the same 'cpptools-linux-arm64.vsix' as I see in artifacts.
This is what I mean by 'not identical'.

[sean-mcmanus]

@invy What do you mean by "had a corresponding entry". Are you referring to the "Licensed under the MIT License. " that appears in some files? Yeah, I'm unsure why there is a difference in license comments. We can look into potentially unifying them.

If you rename the vsix to have a .zip extension and extract it, you can see there's a License.txt under the extension folder which applies to the vsix, i.e. the license has Microsoft-restrictive terms, such as only be usable inside of VS Code. The extension/bin folder has the same License (RuntimeLicense).

I'm not familiar with what the Source Code.zip is -- GitHub itself creates that automatically. I would assume it would be a copy of the repo matching the corresponding insiders or release branch that matches the tag version of the release. I would not expect the Source Code.zip to have the external non-OSS contents in the vsix. The vsix matches what we submit to the Vs Code marketplace -- we upload that to GitHub since some user have requested that and the marketplace doesn't seem to have a way to download a vsix directly outside of VS Code.

During our vsix build process, we pull some other files that are not in the OSS GitHub repo (binaries, licenses, etc.).

[invy]

Yeah, I'm unsure why there is a difference in license comments. We can look into potentially unifying them.

@sean-mcmanus That would be great! Because if I'd like to reuse parts of the extension, I need to be sure what am I dealing with :)

If you rename the vsix to have a .zip extension and extract it, you can see there's a License.txt under the extension folder which applies to the vsix, i.e. the license has Microsoft-restrictive terms, such as only be usable inside of VS Code. The extension/bin folder has the same License (RuntimeLicense).

@sean-mcmanus It would be much better if users could see, what License the package is distributed under, before downloading and installing it. Maybe additional file in artifacts: cpptools-vsix-license.txt to avoid that confusion.

[sean-mcmanus]

I don't think we need to add an additional license disclaimer to our Releases page because our main license at https://github.com/microsoft/vscode-cpptools?tab=License-1-ov-file#readme says

Additional binary files are included in the official VSIX files built and
distributed by Microsoft; these are governed by the more restrictive proprietary
license terms found at [RuntimeLicenses](RuntimeLicenses).

MIT License
...

Also, I don't think adding the text "Licensed under the MIT License. " makes any real difference because it refers to the root license which is the MIT license already (with the disclaimer about the RuntimeLicense inclded in the vsix and binary files). If we change that it would be more for consistency, but I'm not sure which is the preferred comment style.

@bobbrow might have more to say.