Core Viewpoint - Microsoft announced plans to transform VS Code into a fully open-source AI editor platform, emphasizing principles of openness, collaboration, and community-driven development [2][5]. Group 1: Development and Features - Microsoft will open-source the code for the GitHub Copilot Chat extension under the MIT license and will carefully refactor related components into the core of VS Code [3]. - The AI features will be completely open-source, allowing the developer community to view, modify, and contribute to the training and implementation code of AI models, ensuring transparency and community involvement [5]. Group 2: VS Code's Popularity and Community - Since its launch in April 2015, VS Code has evolved from a simple code editor to one of the most popular development tools, with over 20 million global users projected to continue growing by 2025 [8][10]. - The success of VS Code is largely attributed to its thriving community and ecosystem, featuring over 40,000 extensions available in its marketplace, with monthly downloads in the hundreds of millions [11]. Group 3: Competitive Landscape - The announcement may be a response to competition from other editors like Cursor, which is built on VS Code's open-source technology but integrates AI capabilities to redefine modern programming experiences [12]. - Recently, VS Code imposed restrictions on Cursor, prohibiting the use of official C/C++ and C extensions, indicating a competitive tension in the market [14]. - Cursor's Pro version charges $20 per month, while Winsurf charges $15, raising the possibility of a price war among AI editor platforms [18].