binary releases of VS Code without MS branding/telemetry/licensing - GitHub - VSCodium/vscodium: binary releases of VS Code without MS branding/telemetry/licensing
No, M$ VS Code has telemetry (so, yes, data collection, spying, or whatever you want to call it). VSCodium is actually FOSS, built from the Foss sources, and also only allows you access to the foss extensions in the marketplace.
Note that you still have to disable telemetry in codium (or you did the last time I used it), because much like dot net core and Firefox, the basic level telemetry code is open source as well and so removing it is not in the scope of FLOSS-only rebuilds (probably why they open sourced it in the first place). A slight redeeming factor is that it's actually possible to audit the telemetry in this case, and make sure it doesn't collect more than it claims and disabling it in the settings means it's actually disabled.