Display license link for VSIX packages in Extensions View

[Friday32]

You can see information such as download count, link to a repository, and a license link in the extensions view for items downloaded from the marketplace.

My company does not want to publish our extension in the marketplace and instead distribute a VSIX file. I included license information in the package.json and created a VSIX files for testing. I am able to see details in the extensions view after installing the VSIX package. But, a license link does not appear. I assume you must publish the extension to display the link.

If there is a way to display the license link in this scenario, it's not clear to me how to do it. So the feature request would be to display a license link or document how to show it if that's already possible.

[sandy081]

Sorry, entering into package.json is not enough to show the license. It is required to be published as the link is read from Marketplace.

[Friday32]

There is a "tabbed view" (lack of a better term) with "Details", "Contributions", and "Changelog". Could it be possible for an extension author to contribute addition items? Licenses should be prominently displayed.

( There really should a document on the https://code.visualstudio.com/ about handling license issues. Your package.json is likely have dependencies that also have dependencies, and all dependencies have license terms that need to be adhered to. )

[sandy081]

@Friday32 Extension authors can contribute the license by having a license file in your repo. This file is indexed in Marketplace and is shown as license link.

[Friday32]

The problem is linking the license to marketplace and to a repo. It should link locally to the file distributed with the extension. Please understand that not everyone can publish their extensions to the marketplace or upload their code to a publicly repository.

My company produces test and measurement equipment that use Windows 10 embedded. Some customers install our products in secure lab environments where they are not permitted to connect the equipment to the internet. In this case, the marketplace details will be hidden including the license link.

[sandy081]

I see your issue but since it is not a requirement which can be useful for many users I am not sure if we can take this up soon. But we are open to accept PRs if it is important for you. Hence reopened.

[frobinsonj]

I would like to have a go at this.

[GitMensch]

@frobinsonj What happened to your PR?

[GitMensch]

@Friday32 wrote

The problem is linking the license to marketplace and to a repo. It should link locally to the file distributed with the extension.

Agreed, the included one should be the preferred one, possibly with an additional link.

Please understand that not everyone can publish their extensions to the marketplace or upload their code to a publicly repository. [...]
Some customers install our products in secure lab environments where they are not permitted to connect the equipment to the internet.

As a company you may want to setup a local registry (like open-vsx registry) with the extensions published there within the lab and then either adjust the package.json or use the hopefully soon coming option to override the extension provider on the clients to point to this server.
This also comes with the benefit that updating your extensions is only necessary on that single place (the lab-local repository) and all clients can auto-update these from this place (+ you can put additional extensions there, for example language packs or other useful extensions, after verifying them).