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> This is Microsoft's embrace, extend and extinguish strategy from the 1990s in a new wrapper We're all right to be cautious about trusting large companies' mo

> This is Microsoft's embrace, extend and extinguish strategy from the 1990s in a new wrapper We're all right to be cautious about trusting large companies' motives when they embrace an open standard. But I don't think there's any reason to invoke EEE! until they have introduced a proprietary (i.e. closed-source) implementation of something and then added non-standard extensions. Since much of Microsoft's recent activity has been released as open source (MIT licensed, no less), I have a hard time believing Microsoft would go down that road again any time soon. Rather, I think they're building their business on providing the best and easiest-to-use hosting and cloud services provided you're using their excellent and free developer tooling. And I'm OK with that, since they're not doing anything that is unfairly competitive. (Even AWS could start providing VSCode extensions and they'd be on equal footing with Microsoft, though to win they'd have to compete with MS's cloud directly.)

darkwizard42 8y ago
I really agree with your point around "best and easiest-to-use". I like this even more than how Google became defacto choice by being the "better" search engine (I put it in quotes because its pretty fuzzy now if it is better, but when it started it was certainly cleaner and probably better). I like when a company wins by just being superior (and hopefully in a way where they aren't deliberately building a moat)
southerndrift 8y ago
Someone mentioned that MS is not publishing the C# debugger. What good is all that open source code if that key component for development is missing?
- TimTheTinker 8y ago
  If they go defunct or if the C# debugger somehow becomes unavailable, that’s a strong incentive for someone else to build one, given C#’s market reach. Perhaps that person would even be kind enough to open-source it. Either way, because C#/.NET and Roslyn are open-source, the likelihood of .NET shops being left high-and-dry without a debugger is very slim, since it wouldn’t be all that hard for an experienced developer to build another one.
- WalterGR 8y ago
  What good is all that open source code if that key component for development is missing? What good? All that open source code. The constant goalpost moving here is ridiculous. “Oh, Microsoft released n projects as Free Software? Well by god they should have released n+1.”
lokedhs 8y ago
> But I don't think there's any reason to invoke EEE! until they have introduced a proprietary (i.e. closed-source) implementation of something and then added non-standard extensions. That would be WSL wouldn't it? Their goal is clearly to avoid having people moving to Linux as a development platform, and keep them on Windows. The extensions are the ability for Linux processes to integrate with Windows software running on the same machine. In a way, they're extending Linux with Windows services.
- carlosdp 8y ago
  > Their goal is clearly to avoid having people moving to Linux as a development platform, and keep them on Windows. I think it's the opposite. There's little danger that Windows shops are going to move to Linux. However, I know a bunch of devs currently using Macs that would probably switch to Windows with nice devices like the Surface Pro and access to real gaming and such, if only Windows was a suitable Unix environment for their work. They want devs using Macs and such to move to Windows, and I think it's going to work.
  - acct1771 8y ago
    This comment tells me Purism et al need tablets next.
- TimTheTinker 8y ago
  The only implementation built by Microsoft of any standard in WSL is the bridge that provides a Linux kernel interface (it proxies Linux syscalls to the NT kernel). But their only goal there is to support Linux userspace, so it would be rather pointless to add extra syscalls or extend the existing ones. (And besides, they haven't even finished implementing all of the system calls...) For WSL 2, they're taking the Linux kernel whosesale and dropping it into a VM in Hyper-V. If anything, they're backing away from anything that could be construed as a possible EEE.

darkwizard42 8y ago

I really agree with your point around "best and easiest-to-use". I like this even more than how Google became defacto choice by being the "better" search engine (I put it in quotes because its pretty fuzzy now if it is better, but when it started it was certainly cleaner and probably better). I like when a company wins by just being superior (and hopefully in a way where they aren't deliberately building a moat)

southerndrift 8y ago

Someone mentioned that MS is not publishing the C# debugger. What good is all that open source code if that key component for development is missing?

TimTheTinker 8y ago
If they go defunct or if the C# debugger somehow becomes unavailable, that’s a strong incentive for someone else to build one, given C#’s market reach. Perhaps that person would even be kind enough to open-source it. Either way, because C#/.NET and Roslyn are open-source, the likelihood of .NET shops being left high-and-dry without a debugger is very slim, since it wouldn’t be all that hard for an experienced developer to build another one.
WalterGR 8y ago
What good is all that open source code if that key component for development is missing? What good? All that open source code. The constant goalpost moving here is ridiculous. “Oh, Microsoft released n projects as Free Software? Well by god they should have released n+1.”

lokedhs 8y ago

> But I don't think there's any reason to invoke EEE! until they have introduced a proprietary (i.e. closed-source) implementation of something and then added non-standard extensions. That would be WSL wouldn't it? Their goal is clearly to avoid having people moving to Linux as a development platform, and keep them on Windows. The extensions are the ability for Linux processes to integrate with Windows software running on the same machine. In a way, they're extending Linux with Windows services.

carlosdp 8y ago
> Their goal is clearly to avoid having people moving to Linux as a development platform, and keep them on Windows. I think it's the opposite. There's little danger that Windows shops are going to move to Linux. However, I know a bunch of devs currently using Macs that would probably switch to Windows with nice devices like the Surface Pro and access to real gaming and such, if only Windows was a suitable Unix environment for their work. They want devs using Macs and such to move to Windows, and I think it's going to work.
- acct1771 8y ago
  This comment tells me Purism et al need tablets next.
TimTheTinker 8y ago
The only implementation built by Microsoft of any standard in WSL is the bridge that provides a Linux kernel interface (it proxies Linux syscalls to the NT kernel). But their only goal there is to support Linux userspace, so it would be rather pointless to add extra syscalls or extend the existing ones. (And besides, they haven't even finished implementing all of the system calls...) For WSL 2, they're taking the Linux kernel whosesale and dropping it into a VM in Hyper-V. If anything, they're backing away from anything that could be construed as a possible EEE.