Hide non-free extensions

[Mazwak]

trafficstars

Hello

Related to #335, it would be nice to be able to hide non-free extensions when searching, web or ide.

Or at least, make it visually obvious if the extension is free or not.

[spoenemann]

What do you mean by "free"?

Section 3.e of the Publisher Agreement says

You expressly acknowledge that neither Eclipse nor any licensee or end-user of any of your Offerings published on the Registry shall be required to provide you with any compensation for the distribution or use of your Offering as made available on the Registry.

As I understand this, only free-of-charge extensions are allowed to be published.

[Mazwak]

Sorry, I meant "Free software".

I’m not against proprietary extension. I just don’t want to use them.

Example, searching "remote" : https://open-vsx.org/?search=remote

I can’t filter out non-free (software) extensions. I have to check every extensions.

[spoenemann]

Ok, but the boundary is quite unclear then. Some would regard only GPL-licensed extensions as free. Others would accept OSI-approved licenses. And then there are licenses that give you lots of freedom, but may restrict in certain aspects. Where to draw the line?

[Mazwak]

I don’t know many lists, only DFSG or OSI. Anything would suit me.

It could be a flag, filled by publisher, on a trust basis.

In #335, you say auto-publish is based on open-source, so it could also flag free/non-free from autopublish.

[spoenemann]

Ok, keeping this as a feature request.

[Mazwak]

Thanks

[HuJK]

I agree, I think a divisions system or a flag system make our registry more flexible.

We can search by flag or exclude by flag.
We can also embed some condition in base URL in the vs code setting and it will apply to entire vs-code scope.

And there some predefined flags applies to all plugins such as main, contrib or non-free like the apt registry of debian.

1. main: All free software that follows the DFSG (Debian Free Software Guidelines)
2. contrib: Free software that follows DFSG but depends on software in non-free.
3. non-free: All kinds of non-free software that doesn't follow the DFSG.

For example, assume my environment doesn't allows me to use any proprietary plugins, I can set this in vs code:

"extensionsGallery": {
    "serviceUrl": "https://open-vsx.org/vscode/gallery?divisions=main",
    "itemUrl": "https://open-vsx.org/vscode/item?divisions=main"
}

So that it will only shows opensource plugins in the whole vs-code environment.

[vince-fugnitto]

Some additional details, we could also support the pricing label declared in the extension's package.json (https://code.visualstudio.com/api/working-with-extensions/publishing-extension#extension-pricing-label) and display such extensions with a pricing label on their page. In the future we can allow users to filter out "trial" (non-free) extensions using the division system.