Ah that's very, very sad. I guess they have embraced and extended, there's only one thing left to do.
A classic example is ActiveX.
Nah, even that was based on earlier MS technologies - OLE and COM
A good starter list of EEE plays is on the wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguis...
> Examples by Microsoft
> Browser incompatibilities
> The plaintiffs in an antitrust case claimed Microsoft had added support for ActiveX controls in the Internet Explorer Web browser to break compatibility with Netscape Navigator, which used components based on Java and Netscape's own plugin system.
You meant they used ActiveX in an EEE play in the browser wars.
A few decades ago MS did indeed have a playbook which they used to undermine open standards. Laying off some members of the Python team bears no resemblence whatsoever to that. At worst it will delay the improvement of free-threaded Python. That's all.
Your comment is lazy and unfounded.
* VSCode got popular and they started preventing forks from installing its extensions.
* They extended the Free Source pyright language server into the proprietary pylance. They don’t even sell it. It’s just there to make the FOSS version less useful.
* They bought GitHub and started rate limiting it to unlogged in visitors.
Every time Microsoft touches a thing, they end up locking it down. They can’t help it. It’s their nature. And if you’re the frog carrying that scorpion across the pond and it stings you, well, you can only blame it so much. You knew this when they offered the deal.
Every time. It hasn’t changed substantially since they declared that Linux is cancer, except to be more subtle in their attacks.
There's a part of me that wants to scream at them:
"Look around you!!! It's not 1999 anymore!!! These days we have Google, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, etc, which are just as bad if not worse!!! Cut it out with the 20+ year old bad jokes!!!"
Yes, Microsoft is bad. The reason Micr$oft was the enemy back in the day is because they... won. They were bigger than anyone else in the fields that mattered (except for server-side, where they almost one). Now they're just 1 in a gang of evils. There's nothing special about them anymore. I'm more scared of Apple and Google.
But the thing is that Microsoft hasn’t seemed to fundamentally change since 1999. They appear kinder and friendlier but they keep running the same EEE playbook everywhere they can. Lots of us give them a free pass because they let us run a nifty free-for-now programming editor. That doesn’t change the leopard’s spots, though.
MS has continued to metastasize and is in some ways worse than the old days, even if they’ve finally accepted the utility of open source as a loss leader.
They have the only BigTech products I’ve been forced to use if I want to eat.
I’m not anti-MS as much as anti their behavior, whoever is acting that way. This thread is directly related to MS so I’m expressing my opinion on MS here. I’ll be more than happy to share my thoughts on Chrome in a Google thread.
Sabotaging forks is scummy, but the forks were extending MS functionality, not the other way around.
GitHub was a private company before it was bought by MS. Rate limiting is.... not great, but certainly not an extinguish play.
EEE refers to the subversion of open standards or independent free software projects. It does not apply to any of the above.
MS are still scummy but at least attack them on their own demerits, and don't parrot some schtick from decades ago.
So even without EEE, I think it’s supremely risky to hitch your wagon to their tech or services (unless you’re writing primarily for Windows, which is what they’d love to help you migrate to). And I can’t be convinced the GitHub acquisition wasn’t some combination of these dark patterns.
Step 1: Get a plurality of the world’s FOSS into one place.
Step 2: Feed it into a LLM and then embed it in a popular free editor so that everyone can use GPL code without actually having to abide the license.
Step 3: Make it increasingly hard to use for FOSS development by starting to add barriers a little at a time. <= we are here
As a developer, they’ve done nothing substantial to earn my trust. I think a lot of Microsoft employees are good people who don’t subscribe to all this and who want to do the right thing, but corporate culture just won’t let that be.
OK, finally, yes, this is very true, for specific parts of their tech.
But banging on about EEE just distracts from this, more important message.
> Make it increasingly hard to use for FOSS development by starting to add barriers a little at a time. <= we are here
....and now you've lost me again
Hanlon’s razor is a thing, and I generally follow it. It’s just that I’ve seen Microsoft make so many “oops, our bad!” mistakes over the years that purely coincidentally gave them an edge up over their competition, that I tend to distrust such claims from them.
I don’t feel that way about all corps. Oracle doesn’t make little mistakes that accidentally harm the competition while helping themselves. No, they’ll look you in the eye and explain that they’re mugging you while they take your wallet. It’s kind of refreshingly honest in its own way.
Fucking hell bud :D