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Comment by metildaa | Hacker News Reader

Linus may have been sincere in his writing, people saw him as this verbally abusive boogeyman who would tear people apart, which led him to become that type of person more and more.

The embrace and extend going on over in Redmond right now is threatening though, what better time to use your clout and power over a competitors org (that your a member of now) than when you have forked what depended on their software, extended it to work on your platform, and now want to take the wind out of their sails.

The recent reaction from Valve is telling, I think Gabe is fearful about the current state of affairs. We really don't know all the pieces of this puzzle though, so best to watch our backs. Avoid vendor lock-in, its the devil.

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I'm as skeptical of Microsoft as any Linux user who read the Halloween documents, but your comment is overly conspiratorial.

People have been worried about scaling Linus for years, but it seems like there was not much focus on scaling the Linux developer community in general. Contribution quality was maintained through harsh criticism and personal attacks at times, and Linus didn't seem to care if this intimidated people into never contributing at all. Linux has matured, and it's time to acknowledge that some of the rough edges (antisocial aspects) of hacker culture need to go to ensure the project can continue to grow and attract the best code from everyone.

Re: Valve, they've been working on Linux support ever since the Microsoft app store was announced. They see it as a threat to Steam, so first they made the Steam box, Steam for Linux, and now the new DirectX -> Vulkan translation layers (they've also contributed a lot of work to the graphics stack). This isn't some new reaction, it's a strategic hedge they've been working on for the better part of a decade.

> The embrace and extend going on over in Redmond right now is threatening though, what better time to use your clout and power over a competitors org (that your a member of now) than when you have forked what depended on their software, extended it to work on your platform, and now want to take the wind out of their sails.

Can you explain that a bit more? Are you saying Microsoft is using their clout to change the linux kernel to their benefit and the detriment of others? How so?

I got down voted last time I mentioned this like it is some sort of conspiracy and not historical fact, but Microsoft literally used the phrase "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish" [1] as a strategy to defeat competition. So anytime you hear of them embracing something you would do well to be skeptical of their motives.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguis...

Sure, but that was two CEOs ago, and they were the dominant market player in all categories at the time. They're a different company now.

True but maybe they will be applying the tactic at Azure.

Their new strategy appears to be cloud services, all in [1]. Desktop, mobile, hardware, patents, dev tools... everything ties back to encouraging Azure use now. They're offering massive partnerships and credits (first one is always free) to attract new migrations. In the last year their managed service primitives (db's, queues, lambdas, lb, etc etc) has matured tremendously, so now it's convenient and practical to quickly build full hosted applications. Like AWS but different.

As they make more open source contributions, forking popular projects and making their own spin on things, there can be MS flavored Kafka and Classic Kafka, for example.

Then once your service is hosted in Azure, with forked nonstandard services and APIs, it's inconvenient to leave: things aren't close enough to other clouds so you need to re-invest. This is the definition of lockin.

Here at $work we have swallowed the whole lure: investment, credits, partnership, migration, custom services. And that lure has big treble hooks in our gills.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/bobevans1/2018/07/26/why-amazon...

> They're a different company now.

I would argue that they are still driven by sales and bottom lines.

That’s no reason to stop being skeptical, necessarily, but it’s certainly a good sign!

EEE [1] still happened under Ballmer's reign. Ballmer was CEO from 2000 till 2014, a confident of Gates (being employee #30 and the first business manager being hired by Gates) [2].

The Halloween documents [3] also contain FUD [4] disinformation from 2002-2004: Shared Source Initiative, Microsoft's 'investment' in The SCO Group, and the 'Get The Facts' campaign. That SCO lawsuit shenanigans lasted till when, 2008?

I have no issue when people argue Microsoft has changed since Ballmer left and Nadella took charge but like Gates, Ballmer was no angel either.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguis...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Ballmer#History_with_Mic...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halloween_documents

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear,_uncertainty_and_doubt

Can you provide more context re: "The recent reaction from Valve is telling, I think Gabe is fearful about the current state of affairs" ?

I think it's a reference to steam proton, a compatibility layer they built to run windows games on linux.

Microsoft could lock out 3rd party app stores like Steam, and already has on certain versions of Windows.

Valve is trying to protect themselves from irrelevancy, they have all their eggs in the Windows basket, while consoles and mobile are owned by companies that are massive comparatively.

Linus has a reputation to protect. As he said in that BBC writeup, the last thing he wants is to be associated with that horrible scum on the internet. Personally and professionally, he wants to distance himself from the alt-right.

Among the most vocal activists for change in the OSS community, "alt-right" means anyone who does not accept intersectional feminism as a fundamental tenet of their worldview, and given their penchant for "call-out culture" they won't hesitate to put you on blast across Twitter and wherever else.

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