There's plenty of non-MS alternatives to the official MS extensions even on VSCode, and those can also be distributed outside the 'marketplace'. Specifically t

There's plenty of non-MS alternatives to the official MS extensions even on VSCode, and those can also be distributed outside the 'marketplace'. Specifically the MS C/C++ extension isn't all that great either, it isn't developed in the open, full of bugs, and those take forever to be fixed. (e.g. for a Microsoft product, using VSCode is as low-risk as it gets when it comes to vendor-lockin, "just" don't be dependent on the closed-source VSCode extensions created by Microsoft)