The Eclipse Cloud DevTools contributor award this month goes to TypeFox for their initial contribution of and continued work on eclipse/openvsx and its use at the Eclipse Foundation enabling the deployment of the Open VSX Registry at open-vsx.org.
The Open VSX Registry is a vendor-neutral and publicly hosted open source alternative to the Microsoft Visual Studio Marketplace for VS Code extensions. Built on the Eclipse Open VSX project, it delivers on the industry’s need for a more flexible and open approach to VS Code extensions and marketplace technologies.
In contrast to the Visual Studio Marketplace, which is restricted to official Microsoft products, the Open VSX Registry provides free access to VS Code extensions that can be used with any technology or tool that supports them — from VS Code and forks of VS Code like VSCodium, to Eclipse Theia, Eclipse Che, Gitpod, Coder, and SAP Business Application Studio. In addition, Eclipse Open VSX source code is open to all, so anyone can reuse and enhance the marketplace technology to meet their specific needs.
The openvsx project was started in January 2020 by Miro Spönemann and others at TypeFox. The first iteration of open-vsx.org went live in April 2020. In September, 2020, TypeFox began to transition open-vsx.org to the Eclipse Foundation, enabling the Eclipse hosted open-vsx.org to go live in January, 2021 The Open VSX Registry continues to see sustained growth with over 1900 extensions from over 900 different publishers today. Thanks TypeFox, especially Daniel Dietrich, Sven Efftinge, Jan Bicker, Anton Kosyakov, and Miro Spönemann. Thanks also to Gitpod - a heavy user of and active contributor to the Open VSX Registry - where Sven and Anton are now.
We have a white paper available for more information on the Open VSX Registry
This Eclipse Cloud DevTools contributor award is sponsored by EclipseSource, providing consulting and implementation services for web-based tools, Eclipse GLSP, Eclipse Theia, and VS Code.