This could actually be a pretty big deal
- The Eclipse foundation has been making alternatives to VS Code's "killer apps" (Docker, Python, Go, C++, SSH, Live share, etc). AKA the closed source ones exclusive to VS Code offical that make all forks of VS Code a huge downgrade. The Eclipse foundation is also running the extension store that powers VS Codium.
- "why not just use VS Codium?" (With the killer extensions made by Eclipse)
- VS Codium is great, but because of manpower limits, they always have to be "downstream" of VS Code. They can't rewrite any of the core systems.
- As someone who contributes to VS Code, and loves VS Codium, many issues I have with VS Code have been open on github for +7 years, with hundreds of comments and thumbs-ups. We can't even sort the file explorer view by last-edited and folders-first (but we can do folders-first alphabetical). Thats been open since 2017.
- Theia looks like it could finally be the hard fork I've been waiting for. A hackable editor, trying to be open source, where all my extensions work, and the community can actually make a PR, get it merged, and extensions are not excessively sandboxed.
- Will it be that? Only time will tell, but the Eclipse foundation has a pretty good record. They're definitely prepared for long term support.