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I’m not a PowerShell fan by large, but you can tell a whole lot of effort went into this. And for what ends? Seemingly to make more Microsoft technologies and

I’m not a PowerShell fan by large, but you can tell a whole lot of effort went into this. And for what ends? Seemingly to make more Microsoft technologies and APIs available on non-Windows platforms. I genuinely like this part of the “new” Microsoft.

ASalazarMX 7y ago
I feel like we're in the "extend" phase of embrace-extend-extinguish cycle. The last step would be creating Microsoft Linux for Developers when enough market penetration has been achieved, and making sure their tooling is hard to maintain in other distributions.
- jamesgeck0 7y ago
  embrace-extend-extinguish refers to Microsoft's adoption of existing technology. It's not a great fit here; Powershell is their own thing.
  - ASalazarMX 7y ago
    This is just speculation on my part, but the technology being adopted is likely Linux. First Microsoft declares its war on Linux over (Microsoft loves Linux), then the Windows tooling is extended into Linux so the lines blur, then WSL was made so you don't have to leave Windows to use Linux tooling. In my paranoid scenario, a happy ending (for Microsoft) would be: the release of its own Linux that "just works" with the mixed tooling, and young developers considering pure Linux just for small projects.
- unreal37 7y ago
  Amazon has it's own Linux. Why not Microsoft?
- Ididntdothis 7y ago
  I think today embrace, extend and extinguish applies more to cloud providers like AWS. They take a lot of open source, wrap it into their own code and then lock people in. MS is one of the perpetrators but Amazon and Google are no better.
- animalnewbie 7y ago
  Thank God you realize this. Just yesterday I noticed that systemd uses azure pipelines for testing and somebody as wise as you told me that Microsoft is slowly adding windows Installer code to systemd and in a few years you may think you're installing linux but upon first boot systemd will actually install windows.
  - jedieaston 7y ago
    Do you have a link where I can read more about the Windows Installer code thing?
    - Anthony-G 7y ago
      Unfortunately, the person you're responding to was being sarcastic so you're not going to get a link. :(
      - animalnewbie 7y ago
        > unfortunately Found Bill Gates's account.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
  People too young to remember the anti-trust days will deny it, but there is no good reason to trust that this isn't Microsoft's long term plan. You'd be a fool to believe Microsoft has the best interests of the open source community at heart.
  - afiori 7y ago
    And the people that remember take notice of how google/apple are doing a lot worse in that space.
  - josteink 7y ago
    Why can’t it be both? Microsoft has their own selfish reasons for wanting people to use powershell, while at the same time MS open sourcing powershell and providing it as a cross-platform tool people can use on their platform of choice benefits the open-source community? Do you honestly think the open source projects from the likes of Apple, Google, Amazon, Twitter or Facebook is based on their good wishes and interests for “the open source community” (whatever that may be)? Really?
  - JeffreySnover 7y ago
    Those youngings probably don't remember what the Germans and Japanese did in the 40's either. Or the good old day's when Ultrix ran like a racehorse on 4MB of ram (it did BTW!). We don't do our credibility any favor when we live in the past and don't update our worldview based upon current facts. Jeffrey Snover [MSFT]
    - AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
      Current facts: Microsoft shoves ads into the start menu and file explorer, collects a ton of telemetry, resets application associations during updates, and does its best to hide the ability to setup a local-only account during install in its pay-for operating system. So forgive me if I'm cynical of your company's current PR efforts.
Pet_Ant 7y ago
Well it gives a cross-platform scripting language. This can be useful for setting up projects in a dev-shop with both Macs and Windows machines. It's also a nicer scripting language since it's table-based rather than string-based like Bash et al.
jiggawatts 7y ago
This is entirely a self-interested move by Microsoft. They want PowerShell to be the standard shell for managing Azure and Office 365. They have Azure customers that aren't Windows users, so they have to cater for them. That's it. Mind you, there's nothing wrong with this, it makes perfect business sense!
- JeffreySnover 7y ago
  That's not quite right. We have always focused on CUSTOMER success. You are right that there is self interest in that (as Satya likes to say - it is hard to be successful if your customers aren't succeeding) but the PowerShell team has NEVER been confused about what the high order bit is. Without going down the rabbit hole, I'll just point to the fact that our launch partners for PS Core were: - AWS - GCE - VMWARE Jeffrey Snover [MSFT]
  - jiggawatts 7y ago
    Meanwhile PowerShell 6 was basically useless for Windows automation. Even PS7 has open issues for Windows or backwards-compat with PS5. A random example: https://github.com/PowerShell/PowerShell/issues/12027 https://github.com/PowerShell/PowerShell/issues/12027 Generally the impression I have is that PowerShell development effort after v5.1 was 100% cloud-focused, and all Windows-native development stopped dead in the water. All videos and examples of PS6+ I saw were about cloud automation and Linux support. If you would like to dispel my misconception, answer me this: Why has the PowerShell team not fixed any of the long-standing bugs in the Windows Server modules? For example: Get-ADUser 'nonexistent' -ErrorAction:SilentlyContinue has been broken since like... forever. While we're here, how about the fun fact that "Set-Mailbox" doesn't have -WhatIf support, because who needs safety, anyway!? Or how if the very same command fails to find the specified mailbox it helpfully applies the change to the first 1000 users in your organisation instead. Clearly I wanted everyone to have the same surname with no rollback other than a full D/R restore. Fun times.
    - SteveL-MSFT 7y ago
      The PowerShell team doesn't own most of the modules that are shipped in Windows Server. Windows Server is a big project that takes many teams to work together to produce. In your specific example, the AD team owns that module. Set-Mailbox issues need to be sent to the Exchange team. I know you may not like that answer, but it's not feasible for a single team to own so many cmdlets that require different domain expertise.

ASalazarMX 7y ago

I feel like we're in the "extend" phase of embrace-extend-extinguish cycle. The last step would be creating Microsoft Linux for Developers when enough market penetration has been achieved, and making sure their tooling is hard to maintain in other distributions.

jamesgeck0 7y ago
embrace-extend-extinguish refers to Microsoft's adoption of existing technology. It's not a great fit here; Powershell is their own thing.
- ASalazarMX 7y ago
  This is just speculation on my part, but the technology being adopted is likely Linux. First Microsoft declares its war on Linux over (Microsoft loves Linux), then the Windows tooling is extended into Linux so the lines blur, then WSL was made so you don't have to leave Windows to use Linux tooling. In my paranoid scenario, a happy ending (for Microsoft) would be: the release of its own Linux that "just works" with the mixed tooling, and young developers considering pure Linux just for small projects.
unreal37 7y ago
Amazon has it's own Linux. Why not Microsoft?
Ididntdothis 7y ago
I think today embrace, extend and extinguish applies more to cloud providers like AWS. They take a lot of open source, wrap it into their own code and then lock people in. MS is one of the perpetrators but Amazon and Google are no better.
animalnewbie 7y ago
Thank God you realize this. Just yesterday I noticed that systemd uses azure pipelines for testing and somebody as wise as you told me that Microsoft is slowly adding windows Installer code to systemd and in a few years you may think you're installing linux but upon first boot systemd will actually install windows.
- jedieaston 7y ago
  Do you have a link where I can read more about the Windows Installer code thing?
  - Anthony-G 7y ago
    Unfortunately, the person you're responding to was being sarcastic so you're not going to get a link. :(
    - animalnewbie 7y ago
      > unfortunately Found Bill Gates's account.
AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
People too young to remember the anti-trust days will deny it, but there is no good reason to trust that this isn't Microsoft's long term plan. You'd be a fool to believe Microsoft has the best interests of the open source community at heart.
- afiori 7y ago
  And the people that remember take notice of how google/apple are doing a lot worse in that space.
- josteink 7y ago
  Why can’t it be both? Microsoft has their own selfish reasons for wanting people to use powershell, while at the same time MS open sourcing powershell and providing it as a cross-platform tool people can use on their platform of choice benefits the open-source community? Do you honestly think the open source projects from the likes of Apple, Google, Amazon, Twitter or Facebook is based on their good wishes and interests for “the open source community” (whatever that may be)? Really?
- JeffreySnover 7y ago
  Those youngings probably don't remember what the Germans and Japanese did in the 40's either. Or the good old day's when Ultrix ran like a racehorse on 4MB of ram (it did BTW!). We don't do our credibility any favor when we live in the past and don't update our worldview based upon current facts. Jeffrey Snover [MSFT]
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
    Current facts: Microsoft shoves ads into the start menu and file explorer, collects a ton of telemetry, resets application associations during updates, and does its best to hide the ability to setup a local-only account during install in its pay-for operating system. So forgive me if I'm cynical of your company's current PR efforts.

Pet_Ant 7y ago

Well it gives a cross-platform scripting language. This can be useful for setting up projects in a dev-shop with both Macs and Windows machines. It's also a nicer scripting language since it's table-based rather than string-based like Bash et al.

jiggawatts 7y ago

This is entirely a self-interested move by Microsoft. They want PowerShell to be the standard shell for managing Azure and Office 365. They have Azure customers that aren't Windows users, so they have to cater for them. That's it. Mind you, there's nothing wrong with this, it makes perfect business sense!

JeffreySnover 7y ago
That's not quite right. We have always focused on CUSTOMER success. You are right that there is self interest in that (as Satya likes to say - it is hard to be successful if your customers aren't succeeding) but the PowerShell team has NEVER been confused about what the high order bit is. Without going down the rabbit hole, I'll just point to the fact that our launch partners for PS Core were: - AWS - GCE - VMWARE Jeffrey Snover [MSFT]
- jiggawatts 7y ago
  Meanwhile PowerShell 6 was basically useless for Windows automation. Even PS7 has open issues for Windows or backwards-compat with PS5. A random example: https://github.com/PowerShell/PowerShell/issues/12027 https://github.com/PowerShell/PowerShell/issues/12027 Generally the impression I have is that PowerShell development effort after v5.1 was 100% cloud-focused, and all Windows-native development stopped dead in the water. All videos and examples of PS6+ I saw were about cloud automation and Linux support. If you would like to dispel my misconception, answer me this: Why has the PowerShell team not fixed any of the long-standing bugs in the Windows Server modules? For example: Get-ADUser 'nonexistent' -ErrorAction:SilentlyContinue has been broken since like... forever. While we're here, how about the fun fact that "Set-Mailbox" doesn't have -WhatIf support, because who needs safety, anyway!? Or how if the very same command fails to find the specified mailbox it helpfully applies the change to the first 1000 users in your organisation instead. Clearly I wanted everyone to have the same surname with no rollback other than a full D/R restore. Fun times.
  - SteveL-MSFT 7y ago
    The PowerShell team doesn't own most of the modules that are shipped in Windows Server. Windows Server is a big project that takes many teams to work together to produce. In your specific example, the AD team owns that module. Set-Mailbox issues need to be sent to the Exchange team. I know you may not like that answer, but it's not feasible for a single team to own so many cmdlets that require different domain expertise.