I fail to see the problem with this, to be honest. Microsoft provides a free IDE for everyone to use on any platform, but it's not good enough because the language runtimes and proprietary third party tools aren't completely free?

Maybe Microsoft should've made VSCode source-available. Sure, companies taking Microsoft's free labour would need to develop an IDE of their own (or maybe someone can hack Eclipse to work as a browser project?), but at least Microsoft wouldn't take the heat for not doing enough free work for everyone else.

> at least Microsoft wouldn't take the heat for not doing enough free work for everyone else

You're massively misunderstanding the goals of these large companies who provide open source projects, whether it's VSCode, Android, Chrome, or whatever. The goal is always control. Companies at this scale never do free work for the common good.

I don't say this to deride them, I say it as a statement of fact that we all need to be aware of when we choose to use these products.