> why should they have access to the marketplace

Because MS didn’t write most of the extensions yet engineered things conveniently such that you have to use their service to get them. Other text editors somehow manage to not lock people into similar dilemmas. They’re not profiting from running the marketplace or providing VS Code for free, it’s about locking people into a product. Cursor should be allowed access because interoperability is a societal net-benefit.

> those costs

…are likely minescule. I run similar services at my day job, just at a much larger scale than a text editor app marketplace, and know the precise cost to run everything. I am often disturbed that people might actually think cost:revenue is tight enough that they should defend a behemoth about callously gating access to it.

People on HN are conditioned by massively inflated cloud egress prices

Ehhh everything is purely speculation on everyone’s part. Again I don’t think your argument holds up to much.