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Is github.com/Visual-Studio-Code the legitimate owner for using GitHub OAuth authentication in VSCode?


I installed VSCode on a new device today and signed in with GitHub authentication. I happened to review my Authorized OAuth Apps in Github and noticed the GitHub for VS Code application entry says its owned by Visual-Studio-Code and connects to github.com/Visual-Studio-Code rather than the github.com/microsoft/vscode. Is this expected, or is something fishy going on?


Solution

  • On https://github.com/Visual-Studio-Code, that GitHub organization has the verified badge for code.visualstudio.com. And I recognize the names of some of the members from seeing them handling issue tickets in the VS Code repo. Indeed, all those people shown as members of that organization work on the VS Code team.

    See also Visual-Studio-Code organization owns first party authentication but looks very sketchy #158980, where TylerLeonhardt said:

    The root of the problem is

    • we don't wanna move the GitHub for VS Code app under the Microsoft org because that org is huge and not owned by the vscode team
    • we don't wanna move microsoft/vscode to Visual-Studio-Code/vscode as that looks silly...
    • GH doesn't have a way to have an app assigned to a specific repo

    Apparently there are more members of the VS Code team in that GitHub organization whose membership is just not public (source).

    For your reference / learning purposes, I found that issue ticket by searching ""github.com/Visual-Studio-Code"" in the microsoft/vscode repo's search bar.