2. VSCodium is just a FLOSS VSCode binary. You could build it yourself from the available VSCode source. However, the VSCode binary is not FLOSS so you cannot be sure what it is running.
It's not like VS code is the next PRISM-- I'm sure MS has better ways to spy on users ;). The real pull is whether you prefer FLOSS by default.
That's equally true of the VSCodium binary. It's not a reproducible build, I have no way of knowing from which source code the binary was generated.
Of course I could build from source, but VSCodium is just VSCode built from source with a build flag set. So in this regard it's not contributing anything notable (and doesn't claim so either).
* https://reproducible-builds.org
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reproducible_builds
Sorry, but I don't think I am qualified to explain clearly
Seems to just bring another problem by trying to solve one.