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Comment by ncmncm | Hacker News Reader

Embrace... Extend...

What has Microsoft extinguished lately?

Indeed... It is Google now that does the extinguishing...

You know, it's funny. The browser world becomes a Chrome mono-culture and all the SV devs throw a fit, rightly, about the lack of competition. Then they turn around and cheer about the idea of Windows becoming just another chromium... er, sorry, Linux distribution.

Those are not comparable things at all. For starters, Linux is under the GPL. It also wouldn't give Microsoft the level of control over the web that the Chrome monoculture gives to Google.

The SV devs helped Chrome reach where it is.

> It is Google now that does the extinguishing...

Although, to be fair, they are really only extinguishing their own products.

Which were often acquired, or clones of something that died when it had to compete with Google

Microsoft isn't News anymore. Would we notice?

But to extinguish, you need monopoly power, which MS is used to swinging, but isn't quite up to anymore, despite still owning a clear majority of desktops. Apparently owning desktops doesn't give you ownership of the people who use them, anymore.

So, lately, MS is fully occupied extinguishing its own previous products. XP, check. 7? Maybe. 8? Not entirely. By the evidence they might be thought to be trying to extinguish 10.

But old habits die hard.

Edge. Couple of years ago I was really pissed how they fucked up the merge between Hotmail and Skype, I lost so many "friends" because they killed MSN / hotmail.

Microsoft first licensed Internet Explorer in 1994. It's most used engine Trident was released in 1997. IE/Edge was discontinued in 2019. That's one hell of an "Embrace Extend Extingush" cycle.

so microsoft's open source linux kernel is going to cause everyone to stop using linux...?

No, not everyone is going to abandon Linux; I'm going to define Linux in this context as the traditional Linux desktop where people run some sort of X11 or Wayland window manager or desktop environment on top of a Linux kernel running on bare hardware. However, it would be interesting to see what impact the popularity of WSL will have on Linux desktop environments such as KDE, GNOME and its derivatives MATE and Cinnamon, and others such as XFCE. For example, macOS has long been popular with those wanting a polished *nix environment with support for commercial software packages and certain types of drivers, to the point that some high-profile developers such as Miguel de Icaza adopted the Mac. Some may argue that the Linux desktop may have evolved differently had macOS not been an option. Even so, the existence of macOS has not led to the extinction of the Linux desktop. Now, what makes WSL different from macOS is every major PC manufacturer ships their PCs with Windows 10 by default, and WSL can be installed easily on any PC running Windows 10. You can run Linux alongside Microsoft Office and Adobe Creative Suite without having to use WINE. The barrier of entry for using WSL is much lower for a lot of people than the barrier of entry for purchasing a Mac.

This leads to some interesting questions. If a significant segment of Linux users abandon FOSS desktops such as KDE and GNOME for the Windows ecosystem, what will this mean for projects such as Firefox and LibreOffice? What will it mean for KDE, GNOME, and other FOSS desktop environments and window managers?

Now, there will be a contingent of Linux users who won't migrate to WSL for a few reasons. There are some Linux users who won't use Windows, whether it's due to certain features such as telemetry and ads or whether it's due to some other aspect of Windows they don't like. There are some Linux users who need to run Linux directly on their hardware and thus WSL wouldn't fit their needs. There are also Linux users who care about using a stack of software that is fully free and open source and thus wouldn't switch to SWL.

But will there be enough remaining users in order to justify further development of the FOSS Linux desktop in the eyes of major projects like LibreOffice and Firefox? We will see.

What you just said is such a realistic analysis and terrifying....I will keep on running linux on bare metal hardware no matter what. I like to know what is ACTUALLY happening inside an OS,not being told by a company what is SUPPOSEDLY happening.

WSL didn't change much for Linux Desktop landscape and the newer version wont be much different:

Linux Desktop users are there because it offers them a better experience for whatever they are doing. And WSL doesn't change it that much.

If you really need MS Office, you wouldn't be a Linux Desktop user anyways.

I honestly don't see WSL being a game changer for Linux Desktop. But I do see it improving the life of current windows users.

They already did it the moment they started migrating to OS X to develop UNIX based software.

Microsoft just realized that those devs actually don't care about Linux as such, they just want POSIX like features, otherwise they would be helping OEMs that still try to sell Linux based systems.

Maybe on bare metal, but I imagine it will definitely add to the Linux userbase.

socialize the development, privatize the profits?

Overused meme is overused.

Please explain to me how EEE can be applied to GPLv2 code.

It can be pretty easily applied to GPLv2 in commercial agreement. "You get the source under GPL and all the rights, but if you publish anything, you're dead to us and you need our product". This is what grsecurity does with Linux kernel, but the extinguish part is not in their interest.

This post is literally a link to the source code published on Github, and the commits aren't obfuscated either.

My explanation was unrelated to this specific code. You asked for how it can be done with this license.

It is, and was, not just a meme.

It was -- and may still be, where it can be made to work -- official corporate policy and strategy, at highest levels. Complaining about it didn't make it go away. Reduction of monopoly power limited opportunities to employ it. They have never renounced it, or admitted that it was wrong to have done it.

The license is irrelevant. GPL code is useless if nobody uses it.

This is a topic about Microsoft not Google: Mail, Amp, Android (Linux), Google Talk / Hangouts (XMPP), Chrome (websites by Google and external parties that only work on Chrome), and I am probably missing other cases where standard tech has been extended into ways that only Google can support.

The term "embrace, extend, and extinguish" was coined by Microsoft, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguis...

Yes everyone knows where it came from, but the FOSS communities continued screeching and pot banging with that phrase and Microsoft is both tired, played out, and near pointless considering what Google is actively doing to the software world right now.

Dismissing legitimate concerns as screeching is pretty lame. Try making your your arguments without emotional manipulation.

Microsoft was a bad actor and leopards rarely change their spots.

Edit:Forgot to mention the classic whataboutism.

Thankfully, at least in this case, the same is not true for companies. When the highest level of leadership changes, its quite likely that the company, itself, will change as well.

With competent leadership, Microsoft has found a new business model which is working well for them without trying to control the direction of the entire industry. We've got other big players, now, that are far more concerning to me.

I read that as a humorous potshot.

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