5 ms·

It's in their blood - its the 'Embrace' in EEE.

acdha 7y ago
You know that’s from 3 decades and 2 CEOs ago, right? They’re a large company so there’s sure to be plenty to dislike but I don’t think it’s contributing much without some analysis of their actions in this century.
- 29athrowaway 7y ago
  Let me introduce you to Steve Ballmer, the CEO before the current one, Satya Nadella: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2001/06/02/ballmer_linux_is_a_cancer/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2001/06/02/ballmer_linux_is_a_... He was CEO of Microsoft until 2014, that is, 6 years ago. Microsoft changed strategies because they tried everything they possible could to counter open source and Linux and lost. Now they are forced to play nice. Being forced to be nice is not the same as being nice out of altruism. If at any moment becoming jerks gives them more shareholder value they will become jerks again.
  - fortran77 7y ago
    They _lost_? They have a 1.36 trillion USD Market cap (today). That's more than Apple's 1.29 trillion USD Market cap. It's hilarious how people on hacker news live in this bubble where Microsoft has faded away into irrelevance. And they're also very good. I'm running Windows 10 right now on a dual-monitor, dual NVidia GPU, dual Xeon system and everything "just works."
    - AQuantized 7y ago
      Saying they "lost" in this context means they got to a point where it was clear capitulation to open source was the obvious play.
    - Koshkin 7y ago
      > dual-monitor, dual NVidia GPU Not exactly thanks to Microsoft.
      - noisem4ker 7y ago
        To their credit, stability of such a setup might be facilitated by Windows' fine display driver model (WDDM).
      - fortran77 7y ago
        You can't do it on a Mac (unless you want to run two non-supported graphics cards sharing 4 lanes on a Thunderbold/USB-C connector instead of each having their own x16 PCIe connection)
    - 29athrowaway 7y ago
      As if you could not do that on another OS. You can use Nvidia GPUs in SLI mode in Linux and BSD too. I am using an Nvidia GPU right now and I am not using Windows, and "everything just works" too, no terminals involved. Are you implying that it's not possible to do this outside Windows? How much of that market capitalization comes from running a de-facto monopoly of office suites for decades? As a consumer, it's hard to see how corporations like Microsoft push governments around the world to buy licenses in bulk because there are no alternatives.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
- yarrel 7y ago
  Sure let's do that. This century they have bought up LinkedIn, GitHub, npm, and a stake in Facebook. They have replaced Atom with a fauxpen source editor. They've pointed them all at their locked down me-too cloud platform. And don't forget to develop your code on their locked down me-too tablet. What has changed is that MSDN is no longer delivered on CDs. That's because "Open Source" is a much cheaper deliver mechanism if you control the platforms that make its freedoms meaningless. Plus ça change...
  - acdha 7y ago
    > This century they have bought up LinkedIn, GitHub, npm, and a stake in Facebook. They have replaced Atom with a fauxpen source editor. You left out the part where you explained why any of those acquisitions are a problem: LinkedIn is no worse than it was before, GitHub and npm are both popular services people choose to use without coercion, and whether or not you like it a lot of developers are switching to VSCode because it's a better tool which makes them more productive. I don't what you believe to be true about their Azure integration but I know many people who use GitHub, npm, VSC, etc. and none of them use Azure so clearly there's some key step missing in that process.
    - blub 7y ago
      Concentration of power is (or at least I thought it was) obviously bad. This is why there's laws protecting against that but either they're not enforced or they weren't updated to the internet age.
      - acdha 7y ago
        It is a concern but being popular is not the same as having high power: GitHub has lock-in to the extent that it's a great service but it's not exactly like they're changing Git to prevent you from using your own self-hosted service, Gitlab, BitBucket, etc. Similarly, VSCode is open-source with tons of competitors: where's the angle where they have much ability to dictate anything to users?
  - pedrocx486 7y ago
- contextfree 7y ago
  my view is that embrace/extend has really always been a general platform business thing and not specifically a Microsoft thing. it became infamously associated with Microsoft in '90s-00s because of the monopoly position they had. since Microsoft is still a platform business, it's reasonable to be wary of the negative potential of embrace/extend in connection with them, for the same reason it is in connection with Google and others.
  - derefr 7y ago
    I don't see Microsoft doing much EEE on their modern non-cost-centre platform (Azure), though. Amazon is a much clearer example these days, with AWS having "embraced and extended" Postgres into Aurora, Redis into ElastiCache, and many other examples. (I don't know if AWS has ever gone all the way and "extinguished" any of the cores they've built upon, though?)
    - forty 7y ago
      MemoryStore is GCP, AWS' redis is named Elasticache.
    - contextfree 7y ago
      at its most benign embrace/extend can just mean that your product supports the standards people expect and need, and there's also some differentiating aspect in which it's better than the other options (otherwise why does it exist?) It can be a bit fuzzy defining precisely where that benign sense stops and the negative sense where the "differentiation" brings harmful lockin begins. Then if you have a monopoly position the "extinguish" bit can come in. But actually AFAICT Microsoft rarely (never?) actually succeeded in extinguishing any of the open standards they were infamous for attacking - their successes happened earlier against proprietary competitors like Lotus 1/2/3 and Novell Netware
      - derefr 7y ago
        > But actually AFAICT Microsoft rarely (never?) actually succeeded in extinguishing any of the open standards they were infamous for attacking SMB pretty well extinguished the use of NFS; and Active Directory pretty well extinguished the use of LDAP. Neither of these were really Microsoft-driven, though. It was almost the reverse: the ecosystem cloned Microsoft's approach into FOSS, and then liked it better, and replaced their own stuff with it without Microsoft's participation. Sort of like how BitKeeper's approach was cloned as git, which then extinguished most other SCMs.
- m463 7y ago
  I wrote this below, but I'll mention it here this stuff also happens in a benign fashion. Emergent behavior. People/groups and their interests bubble up the self-serving outcomes without being a conspiracy. We have 4 features to support in this release. feature 1 is p0 it is basic functionality. feature 2 is p0 because 3 customers are asking for it. feature 3 is p0 because our team needs it to work with our other product. feature 4 is compatibility and we'll get to that as p1. That's why products get telemetry and linkedin integration, but not compatibility with other software.
- loeg 7y ago
  EEE did not end 3 decades ago and Balmer was only 1 CEO ago, so... no?
- nemothekid 7y ago
  Whether or not you like/dislike EEE, the fact remains that MS openness to Embrace helps them today to quickly implement different technologies into Microsoft's own stack. They may have stopped the "Extend & Extinguish" part, but they haven't forgotten how to Embrace.
rhinoceraptor 7y ago
I don't think they really have the power to extinguish anymore. Sure, Windows is still dominant in the desktop market, but that's not where the novel software is being written. Amazon is the king of EEE these days. Microsoft is desperately trying to remain relevant.

You know that’s from 3 decades and 2 CEOs ago, right? They’re a large company so there’s sure to be plenty to dislike but I don’t think it’s contributing much without some analysis of their actions in this century.

29athrowaway 7y ago
Let me introduce you to Steve Ballmer, the CEO before the current one, Satya Nadella: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2001/06/02/ballmer_linux_is_a_cancer/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2001/06/02/ballmer_linux_is_a_... He was CEO of Microsoft until 2014, that is, 6 years ago. Microsoft changed strategies because they tried everything they possible could to counter open source and Linux and lost. Now they are forced to play nice. Being forced to be nice is not the same as being nice out of altruism. If at any moment becoming jerks gives them more shareholder value they will become jerks again.
- fortran77 7y ago
  They _lost_? They have a 1.36 trillion USD Market cap (today). That's more than Apple's 1.29 trillion USD Market cap. It's hilarious how people on hacker news live in this bubble where Microsoft has faded away into irrelevance. And they're also very good. I'm running Windows 10 right now on a dual-monitor, dual NVidia GPU, dual Xeon system and everything "just works."
  - AQuantized 7y ago
    Saying they "lost" in this context means they got to a point where it was clear capitulation to open source was the obvious play.
  - Koshkin 7y ago
    > dual-monitor, dual NVidia GPU Not exactly thanks to Microsoft.
    - noisem4ker 7y ago
      To their credit, stability of such a setup might be facilitated by Windows' fine display driver model (WDDM).
    - fortran77 7y ago
      You can't do it on a Mac (unless you want to run two non-supported graphics cards sharing 4 lanes on a Thunderbold/USB-C connector instead of each having their own x16 PCIe connection)
  - 29athrowaway 7y ago
    As if you could not do that on another OS. You can use Nvidia GPUs in SLI mode in Linux and BSD too. I am using an Nvidia GPU right now and I am not using Windows, and "everything just works" too, no terminals involved. Are you implying that it's not possible to do this outside Windows? How much of that market capitalization comes from running a de-facto monopoly of office suites for decades? As a consumer, it's hard to see how corporations like Microsoft push governments around the world to buy licenses in bulk because there are no alternatives.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
yarrel 7y ago
Sure let's do that. This century they have bought up LinkedIn, GitHub, npm, and a stake in Facebook. They have replaced Atom with a fauxpen source editor. They've pointed them all at their locked down me-too cloud platform. And don't forget to develop your code on their locked down me-too tablet. What has changed is that MSDN is no longer delivered on CDs. That's because "Open Source" is a much cheaper deliver mechanism if you control the platforms that make its freedoms meaningless. Plus ça change...
- acdha 7y ago
  > This century they have bought up LinkedIn, GitHub, npm, and a stake in Facebook. They have replaced Atom with a fauxpen source editor. You left out the part where you explained why any of those acquisitions are a problem: LinkedIn is no worse than it was before, GitHub and npm are both popular services people choose to use without coercion, and whether or not you like it a lot of developers are switching to VSCode because it's a better tool which makes them more productive. I don't what you believe to be true about their Azure integration but I know many people who use GitHub, npm, VSC, etc. and none of them use Azure so clearly there's some key step missing in that process.
  - blub 7y ago
    Concentration of power is (or at least I thought it was) obviously bad. This is why there's laws protecting against that but either they're not enforced or they weren't updated to the internet age.
    - acdha 7y ago
      It is a concern but being popular is not the same as having high power: GitHub has lock-in to the extent that it's a great service but it's not exactly like they're changing Git to prevent you from using your own self-hosted service, Gitlab, BitBucket, etc. Similarly, VSCode is open-source with tons of competitors: where's the angle where they have much ability to dictate anything to users?
- pedrocx486 7y ago
contextfree 7y ago
my view is that embrace/extend has really always been a general platform business thing and not specifically a Microsoft thing. it became infamously associated with Microsoft in '90s-00s because of the monopoly position they had. since Microsoft is still a platform business, it's reasonable to be wary of the negative potential of embrace/extend in connection with them, for the same reason it is in connection with Google and others.
- derefr 7y ago
  I don't see Microsoft doing much EEE on their modern non-cost-centre platform (Azure), though. Amazon is a much clearer example these days, with AWS having "embraced and extended" Postgres into Aurora, Redis into ElastiCache, and many other examples. (I don't know if AWS has ever gone all the way and "extinguished" any of the cores they've built upon, though?)
  - forty 7y ago
    MemoryStore is GCP, AWS' redis is named Elasticache.
  - contextfree 7y ago
    at its most benign embrace/extend can just mean that your product supports the standards people expect and need, and there's also some differentiating aspect in which it's better than the other options (otherwise why does it exist?) It can be a bit fuzzy defining precisely where that benign sense stops and the negative sense where the "differentiation" brings harmful lockin begins. Then if you have a monopoly position the "extinguish" bit can come in. But actually AFAICT Microsoft rarely (never?) actually succeeded in extinguishing any of the open standards they were infamous for attacking - their successes happened earlier against proprietary competitors like Lotus 1/2/3 and Novell Netware
    - derefr 7y ago
      > But actually AFAICT Microsoft rarely (never?) actually succeeded in extinguishing any of the open standards they were infamous for attacking SMB pretty well extinguished the use of NFS; and Active Directory pretty well extinguished the use of LDAP. Neither of these were really Microsoft-driven, though. It was almost the reverse: the ecosystem cloned Microsoft's approach into FOSS, and then liked it better, and replaced their own stuff with it without Microsoft's participation. Sort of like how BitKeeper's approach was cloned as git, which then extinguished most other SCMs.
m463 7y ago
I wrote this below, but I'll mention it here this stuff also happens in a benign fashion. Emergent behavior. People/groups and their interests bubble up the self-serving outcomes without being a conspiracy. We have 4 features to support in this release. feature 1 is p0 it is basic functionality. feature 2 is p0 because 3 customers are asking for it. feature 3 is p0 because our team needs it to work with our other product. feature 4 is compatibility and we'll get to that as p1. That's why products get telemetry and linkedin integration, but not compatibility with other software.
loeg 7y ago
EEE did not end 3 decades ago and Balmer was only 1 CEO ago, so... no?
nemothekid 7y ago
Whether or not you like/dislike EEE, the fact remains that MS openness to Embrace helps them today to quickly implement different technologies into Microsoft's own stack. They may have stopped the "Extend & Extinguish" part, but they haven't forgotten how to Embrace.

rhinoceraptor 7y ago

I don't think they really have the power to extinguish anymore. Sure, Windows is still dominant in the desktop market, but that's not where the novel software is being written. Amazon is the king of EEE these days. Microsoft is desperately trying to remain relevant.