Gitpod has created a new open source project (licensed under MIT) around Gitpod’s ‘OpenVSCode Server‘ implementation of upstream, stock VS Code. This project helps every individual developer and/or company to run upstream and stable VS Code in the browser. By doing so, Gitpod is making a browser-based VS Code developer experience accessible for everyone allowing developers and teams to run VS Code on cloud-powered servers and access it from any device – all you need is a browser.

The launch of Github Codespaces has pushed browser-based, remote development into the mainstream. However, Microsoft / VS Code did not open source their server implementation. As a result, developers cannot run the most upstream VS Code in a browser and server context, as the source code that is driving Github Codespaces is not open source.

With Gitpod’s creation of the ‘OpenVSCode Server’ open source project, dev teams will have access to all the benefits of cloud-based IDEs in a vendor-neutral solution. Teams and individual developers can use the most popular IDE in the world on any device, at any time, deployed on any machine, including access to all VS Code extensions via the vendor-neutral OpenVSX marketplace – another project that Gitpod initially created. Since they are using the same application that is also running on desktop, they always get the latest VS Code.

The initiative is supported by industry and technology leaders such as GitLab, VMware, Uber, RStudio, SAP, Sourcegraph, SUSE Rancher, Tabnine, Render and TypeFox.

To find out more about the general benefits of cloud-based development, click here.