12 ms·

Look, I'm not saying saying we should "trust" Microsoft not to Embrace, Extend, Extinguish if they could - but they can't and they know it, so that's not their

by m12k 6y ago

Look, I'm not saying saying we should "trust" Microsoft not to Embrace, Extend, Extinguish if they could - but they can't and they know it, so that's not their strategy. EEE was hinged entirely on the dominance of Windows and IE for the Extinguish phase. They won on desktop, but today most of the action has moved to mobile (where Windows lost completely to iOS and Android) and webservers (where Linux is massively dominant). In those domains, they are no longer the 500 pound gorilla in the room, they're the "hey, fellow kids" oldtimer trying to fit in and get in on a piece of the action. Look at a comp sci class in the last decade, and you'll see 1/2-2/3rds of them with MacBook Pros in their laps, because it compiles iOS apps and it's a *nix so it easily runs most of the same tools as a linux webserver. That's what WSL is about, trying to win back developers. That's why they bought Xamarin and Github. That's why they released VS Code. They're trying to win back developers by meeting them whereever they are, even if they know they are targeting platforms where Microsoft is not dominant and has no hope of becoming so. They're trying to make it feasible to target a linux webserver while developing on Windows. They're trying to make Azure a serious contender for cloud computing outside of the corporate C# world. There's not a realistic scenario where they become dominant enough on those platforms to execute any kind of Extinguish move. And they don't need to - there's still tons of money to be made with just a slice of the cloud pie. I think EEE went out the window along with Balmer and the 'Windows First' doctrine. I'm not saying they wouldn't, but I'm saying they can't and they know it, and they're ok with that. All this is not to say that there's any reason for upstream to accept any bad patches that rely too much on proprietary code. But in this case, I think the analysis of the underlying motivations for that patch was outdated.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
bad_user 6y ago
The impression that "most of the action has moved to mobile" is just an impression. First of all the market share of desktop versus mobile is roughly 43% for the desktop, 57% for mobiles and tablets. More importantly however is that the rise of mobiles has been sharp since 2009, but it's been stagnating since 2017 and this stagnation trend is clear. Mobile devices too are a commodity, their market isn't growing any bigger and people aren't replacing their phones as often. The market for the desktop did not shrink. It just reached saturation. And as it will become increasingly clear, mobiles have reached saturation too. What devices do people use in companies to do their jobs? Laptops. Sometimes tablets, for drawing on them, although a piece of paper would do. Mobile devices have been and remain essential for communications, this meant phone calls in the past, nowadays it means WhatsApp, Slack, email, along with shitposting on Facebook/Instagram/Twitter, but that's about it. > "webservers (where Linux is massively dominant)" Sorry to disappoint you, but the market for web servers is actually small, unless you're Amazon and Microsoft realized at some point that selling Linux boxes on Azure is probably more lucrative than what they were doing. The web servers space was never Microsoft's so they had nothing to lose. But the enterprise space is dominated by Microsoft, with their dominance only increasing. Exchange, Sharepoint, Office 365, Skype, Microsoft Teams, Azure DevOps, freaking Yammer, MS SQL, soon GitHub, their reach in the enterprise and their adoption, once you're familiar with the space, is actually quite scary. I have to hand it to them, they became really good at marketing. Otherwise I can't explain this portrayal of them as being the underdog. Or the constant nagging messages I see about them having changed, due to them releasing VS Code or .NET Core. No they haven't changed much. The tooling they make for developers has always been top notch and while .NET was proprietary, they standardized it and they never attacked Mono. Office has been available on Macs since 1989. And they no longer target Linux with patent threats of course, they target Android instead. Until they'll find some way to sell Android. They adopted Chromium, a master move since now they can cut some development costs and win back some users and sell them on Bing too. We'll probably see them windowfying Android too. --- Note that I do enjoy several Microsoft products. But I'm always skeptical when hearing about their motivation. I don't understand what makes people cheer for these big companies, as if they are sports teams. Use their products for what they are and dump them as soon as you find something better.
- tdsamardzhiev 6y ago
  Yeah, most of the consumption has moved to mobile. But people who make stuff are still predominantly using desktop/notebook computers.
  - m12k 6y ago
    Right, and most of the consumption is being served from linux servers. So Microsoft is trying to use their strength on desktop and in production to stay relevant in that ecosystem, even though it involves other platforms than Windows - hence the focus on cross-compilation and cross-platform tech.
- computerex 6y ago
  > The tooling they make for developers has always been top notch I have to emphatically disagree there. Up until recently Windows didn't even have a decent terminal app. As a developer I tend to shy away from Windows precisely because the *Nix alternatives offer a better development experience, from cli to package management and more.
  - pjmlp 6y ago
    Not every developer needs a terminal app to feel like one. In fact Mac OS also didn't have any until OS X.
    - tech-historian 6y ago
      OS X was released in 2001, which is a pretty long time ago.
      - pjmlp 6y ago
        Yet classical Mac OS developers were able to do without one for 17 years, and I bet most developers actually targeting Apple devices still do without one, when I look around the office over here and see InteliJ, XCode and AppCode.
dvfjsdhgfv 6y ago
> you'll see 1/2-2/3rds of them with MacBook Pros in their laps, because it compiles iOS apps Apple can be as hardheaded as Microsoft. I have several Apple machines and each of them was bought specifically for developing iOS apps, other uses appeared later. Apple can provide Swift for Windows and Linux, but they will never allow building iOS apps on non-Mac hardware.
NeverFade 6y ago
> EEE was hinged entirely on the dominance of Windows and IE for the Extinguish phase. EEE was more effective when Microsoft was completely dominant, but it's clearly still effective even when that dominance has diminished. This move, for instance, will cause Linux users to depend on a proprietary, closed-source API entirely controlled by Microsoft. It's very bad for Linux and very good for Microsoft. It's a lever of Microsoft control, extended into the rival Linux system. Very easy to see how it effectively fragments the Linux ecosystem and allows Microsoft to forcibly pull users who come to depend on DirectX from Linux to Windows by manipulating this lever - reducing Linux support in the future, etc. This is classic EEE, and the only way you can dismiss it is if you believe their PR, as apparently you do: > they are no longer the 500 pound gorilla in the room, they're the "hey, fellow kids" oldtimer trying to fit in and get in on a piece of the action. As the other comment explained, they are still a huge gorilla in spaces that are absolutely vital to Linux: server, desktop, and laptop. Linux as we know it lives or dies on the server and desktop / laptop markets. Yes, Android is technically based on the Linux kernel, but it builds an entirely different ecosystem on top of it. The Linux ecosystem is only on the server and PC - exactly where Microsoft is competing. Finally, the availability of this proprietary API will reduce the incentive for hardware companies like Nvidia to allow development of direct Linux support (drivers etc) for their products - which is what Linux really needs in order to survive, let alone prosper.
- shandor 6y ago
  > As one last point to consider: Linux as we know it lives or dies on the server and desktop / laptop markets I agree with your general sentiment, but just wanted to note that high-end embedded systems are also a very Linux-heavy domain. Even though from hardware side it might look similar to the mobile space (ARMs everywhere etc.) it is actually a completely different world.
- halbritt 6y ago
  > As the other comment explained, they are still a huge gorilla in spaces that are absolutely vital to Linux: server, desktop, and laptop. No reasonable person at Microsoft considers Linux to be a threat on the desktop/laptop. No reasonable person at Microsoft considers Windows Server to be a threat to Linux on the server.
skohan 6y ago
> That's what WSL is about, trying to win back developers. That's why they bought Xamarin and Github. That's why they released VS Code. They're trying to win back developers by meeting them whereever they are, even if they know they are targeting platforms where Microsoft is not dominant and has no hope of becoming so. They're trying to make it feasible to target a linux webserver while developing on Windows. They're trying to make Azure a serious contender for cloud computing outside of the corporate C# world. So in other words, what you're saying is they are Embracing this FOSS linux-based developer workflow... And you could almost say they're Extending the linux kernel to support DX12 on WSL... Am I missing something?
- m12k 6y ago
  Could you explain to me what you think an Extinguish step would look like in that sequence? Because I don't think there is a realistic one, and I don't think Microsoft thinks so either.
  - skohan 6y ago
    I think it's hyperbolic to imagine that MS will manage to fully extinguish Linux outside of WSL, but that's not the only way they could damage the linux ecosystem by leveraging the foothold they are building in the FOSS world. It's not so hard to imagine picking up a legacy project at some point in the future, and pretty much having to develop it on Windows and deploy to Azure because of some WSL-specific dependencies baked into the framework it's built on. That's just one scenario, but the point is why would you expect that they wouldn't leverage their market-share to disadvantage competitors if they ever got into position to do so? Just because they aren't in that position now doesn't mean we shouldn't be put off by the fact that they're building those levers to fragment the ecosystem now.
  - generalk 6y ago
    Correct me if I'm wrong, but my impression here is that Windows Subsystem for Linux will support DX12, but not broader Linux support for DX12. So if you want a machine that can play games and run a Linux dev toolchain, that would require a Windows install. If you can incentivize folks who may never have installed Windows to do so, and keep them there as the only place they can both play games and use their preferred dev environment, then you've extinguished that portion of the desktop linux install base. EDIT: Also I absolutely love the "I don't think Microsoft thinks so either." Microsoft is a for-profit corporation who's eyeing a way to get users who traditionally avoid them to come to their platform and stay there. They aren't some benevolent font of cool tech, they're trying to sell you products.
rapind 6y ago
So what you're saying is "Developers, Developers, Developers!"?
- kevin_thibedeau 6y ago
  Watch out for flying penguins.
TheRealDunkirk 6y ago
> In those domains, they are no longer the 500 pound gorilla in the room, they're the "hey, fellow kids" oldtimer trying to fit in and get in on a piece of the action. Said of a company which owns a market-shaping player in every layer of the stack: OS, directory, database, applications, development languages, source code repository, and the second-biggest cloud to host it all in. Given that mobile and web involve about half of that list, I fail to see how they're some sort of non-player, trying to play "catchup" to the rest of the world now.
- pjmlp 6y ago
  SV distortion field.
- Maakuth 6y ago
  Not to mention the biggest public company in the world, alternating with Apple.
TheKarateKid 6y ago
Very well stated. People should be much more concerned about EEE from Google, as we’ve been seeing more of all the time with Chrome.
jfkebwjsbx 6y ago
> Look at a comp sci class in the last decade, and you'll see 1/2-2/3rds of them with MacBook Pros in their laps, Perhaps in some countries, definitely not everywhere. At my university, there is only a single Mac across 40 or so laptops. > because it compiles iOS apps I doubt students buy Macs for that. iPhones are not nearly as popular outside the US. > and it's a *nix Students don’t care about its UNIX certification. Most don’t even know what that is when they start their undergrad. > it easily runs most of the same tools as a linux webserver No, it does not. Many important dev tools are not available, not even through brew. > That's what WSL is about, trying to win back developers Globally, the majority of developers are on Windows/Linux, not macOS. > They're trying to make it feasible to target a linux webserver I’d bet this is about avoiding Linux becoming the major platform for ML/DS/AI, rather than anything about macOS.
- toxik 6y ago
  What is this, an attempt at gaslighting? Macs are really common in university settings, I won't bother discussing why here, but it is undeniably so in much of the western world.
  - Semaphor 6y ago
    Max 10% at my university in Germany. I’d say windows/linux was about an even split for the rest.
29athrowaway 6y ago
On businesses and government Microsoft Office continues to have a dominant market share. And that's a lot of money. Not only US government, but almost every government around the globe is using it. And on macOS, that's still the case.
xlqa 6y ago
The modern form of EEE is buying OSS devlopers, who increasingly make excuses for Microsoft and proprietary extensions. The modern form of EEE is being platinum sponsor of the Linux Foundation and insert a CoC into the source tree. Corporations don't want the "angry young OSS men" of the 1990s and early 2000s, who could be an actual threat. Corporations want submissive, neutered and obedient developers.
pjmlp 6y ago
Google is already one step ahead of Microsoft with ChromeOS and Android.

by m12k 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

bad_user 6y ago

The impression that "most of the action has moved to mobile" is just an impression. First of all the market share of desktop versus mobile is roughly 43% for the desktop, 57% for mobiles and tablets. More importantly however is that the rise of mobiles has been sharp since 2009, but it's been stagnating since 2017 and this stagnation trend is clear. Mobile devices too are a commodity, their market isn't growing any bigger and people aren't replacing their phones as often. The market for the desktop did not shrink. It just reached saturation. And as it will become increasingly clear, mobiles have reached saturation too. What devices do people use in companies to do their jobs? Laptops. Sometimes tablets, for drawing on them, although a piece of paper would do. Mobile devices have been and remain essential for communications, this meant phone calls in the past, nowadays it means WhatsApp, Slack, email, along with shitposting on Facebook/Instagram/Twitter, but that's about it. > "webservers (where Linux is massively dominant)" Sorry to disappoint you, but the market for web servers is actually small, unless you're Amazon and Microsoft realized at some point that selling Linux boxes on Azure is probably more lucrative than what they were doing. The web servers space was never Microsoft's so they had nothing to lose. But the enterprise space is dominated by Microsoft, with their dominance only increasing. Exchange, Sharepoint, Office 365, Skype, Microsoft Teams, Azure DevOps, freaking Yammer, MS SQL, soon GitHub, their reach in the enterprise and their adoption, once you're familiar with the space, is actually quite scary. I have to hand it to them, they became really good at marketing. Otherwise I can't explain this portrayal of them as being the underdog. Or the constant nagging messages I see about them having changed, due to them releasing VS Code or .NET Core. No they haven't changed much. The tooling they make for developers has always been top notch and while .NET was proprietary, they standardized it and they never attacked Mono. Office has been available on Macs since 1989. And they no longer target Linux with patent threats of course, they target Android instead. Until they'll find some way to sell Android. They adopted Chromium, a master move since now they can cut some development costs and win back some users and sell them on Bing too. We'll probably see them windowfying Android too. --- Note that I do enjoy several Microsoft products. But I'm always skeptical when hearing about their motivation. I don't understand what makes people cheer for these big companies, as if they are sports teams. Use their products for what they are and dump them as soon as you find something better.

tdsamardzhiev 6y ago
Yeah, most of the consumption has moved to mobile. But people who make stuff are still predominantly using desktop/notebook computers.
- m12k 6y ago
  Right, and most of the consumption is being served from linux servers. So Microsoft is trying to use their strength on desktop and in production to stay relevant in that ecosystem, even though it involves other platforms than Windows - hence the focus on cross-compilation and cross-platform tech.
computerex 6y ago
> The tooling they make for developers has always been top notch I have to emphatically disagree there. Up until recently Windows didn't even have a decent terminal app. As a developer I tend to shy away from Windows precisely because the *Nix alternatives offer a better development experience, from cli to package management and more.
- pjmlp 6y ago
  Not every developer needs a terminal app to feel like one. In fact Mac OS also didn't have any until OS X.
  - tech-historian 6y ago
    OS X was released in 2001, which is a pretty long time ago.
    - pjmlp 6y ago
      Yet classical Mac OS developers were able to do without one for 17 years, and I bet most developers actually targeting Apple devices still do without one, when I look around the office over here and see InteliJ, XCode and AppCode.

dvfjsdhgfv 6y ago

> you'll see 1/2-2/3rds of them with MacBook Pros in their laps, because it compiles iOS apps Apple can be as hardheaded as Microsoft. I have several Apple machines and each of them was bought specifically for developing iOS apps, other uses appeared later. Apple can provide Swift for Windows and Linux, but they will never allow building iOS apps on non-Mac hardware.

NeverFade 6y ago

> EEE was hinged entirely on the dominance of Windows and IE for the Extinguish phase. EEE was more effective when Microsoft was completely dominant, but it's clearly still effective even when that dominance has diminished. This move, for instance, will cause Linux users to depend on a proprietary, closed-source API entirely controlled by Microsoft. It's very bad for Linux and very good for Microsoft. It's a lever of Microsoft control, extended into the rival Linux system. Very easy to see how it effectively fragments the Linux ecosystem and allows Microsoft to forcibly pull users who come to depend on DirectX from Linux to Windows by manipulating this lever - reducing Linux support in the future, etc. This is classic EEE, and the only way you can dismiss it is if you believe their PR, as apparently you do: > they are no longer the 500 pound gorilla in the room, they're the "hey, fellow kids" oldtimer trying to fit in and get in on a piece of the action. As the other comment explained, they are still a huge gorilla in spaces that are absolutely vital to Linux: server, desktop, and laptop. Linux as we know it lives or dies on the server and desktop / laptop markets. Yes, Android is technically based on the Linux kernel, but it builds an entirely different ecosystem on top of it. The Linux ecosystem is only on the server and PC - exactly where Microsoft is competing. Finally, the availability of this proprietary API will reduce the incentive for hardware companies like Nvidia to allow development of direct Linux support (drivers etc) for their products - which is what Linux really needs in order to survive, let alone prosper.

shandor 6y ago
> As one last point to consider: Linux as we know it lives or dies on the server and desktop / laptop markets I agree with your general sentiment, but just wanted to note that high-end embedded systems are also a very Linux-heavy domain. Even though from hardware side it might look similar to the mobile space (ARMs everywhere etc.) it is actually a completely different world.
halbritt 6y ago
> As the other comment explained, they are still a huge gorilla in spaces that are absolutely vital to Linux: server, desktop, and laptop. No reasonable person at Microsoft considers Linux to be a threat on the desktop/laptop. No reasonable person at Microsoft considers Windows Server to be a threat to Linux on the server.

skohan 6y ago

> That's what WSL is about, trying to win back developers. That's why they bought Xamarin and Github. That's why they released VS Code. They're trying to win back developers by meeting them whereever they are, even if they know they are targeting platforms where Microsoft is not dominant and has no hope of becoming so. They're trying to make it feasible to target a linux webserver while developing on Windows. They're trying to make Azure a serious contender for cloud computing outside of the corporate C# world. So in other words, what you're saying is they are Embracing this FOSS linux-based developer workflow... And you could almost say they're Extending the linux kernel to support DX12 on WSL... Am I missing something?

m12k 6y ago
Could you explain to me what you think an Extinguish step would look like in that sequence? Because I don't think there is a realistic one, and I don't think Microsoft thinks so either.
- skohan 6y ago
  I think it's hyperbolic to imagine that MS will manage to fully extinguish Linux outside of WSL, but that's not the only way they could damage the linux ecosystem by leveraging the foothold they are building in the FOSS world. It's not so hard to imagine picking up a legacy project at some point in the future, and pretty much having to develop it on Windows and deploy to Azure because of some WSL-specific dependencies baked into the framework it's built on. That's just one scenario, but the point is why would you expect that they wouldn't leverage their market-share to disadvantage competitors if they ever got into position to do so? Just because they aren't in that position now doesn't mean we shouldn't be put off by the fact that they're building those levers to fragment the ecosystem now.
- generalk 6y ago
  Correct me if I'm wrong, but my impression here is that Windows Subsystem for Linux will support DX12, but not broader Linux support for DX12. So if you want a machine that can play games and run a Linux dev toolchain, that would require a Windows install. If you can incentivize folks who may never have installed Windows to do so, and keep them there as the only place they can both play games and use their preferred dev environment, then you've extinguished that portion of the desktop linux install base. EDIT: Also I absolutely love the "I don't think Microsoft thinks so either." Microsoft is a for-profit corporation who's eyeing a way to get users who traditionally avoid them to come to their platform and stay there. They aren't some benevolent font of cool tech, they're trying to sell you products.

rapind 6y ago

So what you're saying is "Developers, Developers, Developers!"?

kevin_thibedeau 6y ago
Watch out for flying penguins.

TheRealDunkirk 6y ago

> In those domains, they are no longer the 500 pound gorilla in the room, they're the "hey, fellow kids" oldtimer trying to fit in and get in on a piece of the action. Said of a company which owns a market-shaping player in every layer of the stack: OS, directory, database, applications, development languages, source code repository, and the second-biggest cloud to host it all in. Given that mobile and web involve about half of that list, I fail to see how they're some sort of non-player, trying to play "catchup" to the rest of the world now.

pjmlp 6y ago
SV distortion field.
Maakuth 6y ago
Not to mention the biggest public company in the world, alternating with Apple.

TheKarateKid 6y ago

Very well stated. People should be much more concerned about EEE from Google, as we’ve been seeing more of all the time with Chrome.

jfkebwjsbx 6y ago

> Look at a comp sci class in the last decade, and you'll see 1/2-2/3rds of them with MacBook Pros in their laps, Perhaps in some countries, definitely not everywhere. At my university, there is only a single Mac across 40 or so laptops. > because it compiles iOS apps I doubt students buy Macs for that. iPhones are not nearly as popular outside the US. > and it's a *nix Students don’t care about its UNIX certification. Most don’t even know what that is when they start their undergrad. > it easily runs most of the same tools as a linux webserver No, it does not. Many important dev tools are not available, not even through brew. > That's what WSL is about, trying to win back developers Globally, the majority of developers are on Windows/Linux, not macOS. > They're trying to make it feasible to target a linux webserver I’d bet this is about avoiding Linux becoming the major platform for ML/DS/AI, rather than anything about macOS.

toxik 6y ago
What is this, an attempt at gaslighting? Macs are really common in university settings, I won't bother discussing why here, but it is undeniably so in much of the western world.
- Semaphor 6y ago
  Max 10% at my university in Germany. I’d say windows/linux was about an even split for the rest.

29athrowaway 6y ago

On businesses and government Microsoft Office continues to have a dominant market share. And that's a lot of money. Not only US government, but almost every government around the globe is using it. And on macOS, that's still the case.

xlqa 6y ago

The modern form of EEE is buying OSS devlopers, who increasingly make excuses for Microsoft and proprietary extensions. The modern form of EEE is being platinum sponsor of the Linux Foundation and insert a CoC into the source tree. Corporations don't want the "angry young OSS men" of the 1990s and early 2000s, who could be an actual threat. Corporations want submissive, neutered and obedient developers.

pjmlp 6y ago

Google is already one step ahead of Microsoft with ChromeOS and Android.