Pointless was my thought after initially installing it years ago. Ok, I’m installing this open source “clean” version, just to install a bunch of MS proprietary spyware extensions? Why not just use the real thing?

Nowadays there are good alternatives to some of the proprietary Microsoft extensions, I use the basedpyright extension on VSCodium and prefer it to Microsoft's proprietary Pylance. I've also heard good things about the clangd extension as an alternative to the C/C++ extension.