Yes, but that is the server mode that is not free to use. If you want a free mode that lets you connect to a server, you might want to check out the remote SSH support: https://positron.posit.co/remote-ssh.html
We have thought pretty carefully about what kind of functionality works well in extensions (in fact, we build and maintain a number of extensions!) and came to the decision that the more integrated data science experience we wanted to make required forking.
Thanks for your thoughts on the license; we know that it's FRAUGHT, for sure. Our company makes quite a lot of software available under OSI-approved licenses (MIT, etc) and we did think pretty carefully about what to try here, given our goals around both OSS and building a sustainable business.
We do use OpenVSX, yes, like the other forks, and our company is a major sponsor of OpenVSX. Security around the extension ecosystem is a pretty messy, complicated issue both for the proprietary Microsoft marketplace and OpenVSX. For example, the recent Amazon Q story! I currently think about it as conceptually fairly similar to the risks of using packages from PyPI or npm.
We talk a bit about why we chose the Elastic license here: https://positron.posit.co/licensing.html
We have thought pretty carefully about what kind of functionality works well in extensions (in fact, we build and maintain a number of extensions!) and came to the decision that the more integrated data science experience we wanted to make required forking.