4 ms·

I’ll laugh when they get to the third e. It’s the same tricks that they’ve played before, but everyone is too young to remember it on their own skin and the old

I’ll laugh when they get to the third e. It’s the same tricks that they’ve played before, but everyone is too young to remember it on their own skin and the older ones who remember are ridiculed. They’re moving just like the frog stays comfortable in the slowly boiling pot, with a slow and steady embrace. Their target audience is unsuspecting as if Microsoft has become some kind of altruistic force. But no monster of that size is altruistic, they’re hungry for fresh souls:) And they’ll have ‘em it seems. It won’t hurt, the denial will mitigate the pain.

bvelica 6y ago
OK, I am one of the young ones :) What are you talking about ? Thank you!
- SahAssar 6y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguis...
- Jleagle 6y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguis...
- dangravell 6y ago
  "Embrace and extend" I think - appear to adopt or support a technology only to attempt to influence, limit and block later developments. Other examples: J#, the Office XML standards etc etc
  - bvelica 6y ago
    Aaaa... yes I understand! Thank you
- jez 6y ago
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extingu... The “third e” is extinguish.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- jmiskovic 6y ago
  Try this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguis... This seems more like a product of love from one developer. Doesn't seem like a cunning move in some grand scheme. Companies don't have personality and even company culture is very hard to maintain across many offices spread out over the globe.
todd3834 6y ago
I’m glad I’m not the only one who sees Microsoft’s well documented playbook. Embrace (Linux on Windows yay!), Extend (Procmon for Linux yay!). Is extinguish around the corner? Then again it is different people with a seemingly different playbook. I’m still slightly uncomfortable with it.
- maze-le 6y ago
  They just might extinguish Windows with that. Think about it: if the next Windows release becomes just another Linux distribution with some fancy proprietary features, and proprietary driver/hardware support they just might convince enough Linux firebrands switch over. The Bulk of their income is not the sale of Windows Licenses anymore but cloud services. If enough developers get around the idea that a "Windows flavored Linux" is not such a bad thing after all, they might be able to establish it as a de-facto standard platform for desktop and servers (and someday maybe even embedded devices). I am also slightly uncomfortable with that, but they are not the player they once were back in the 90ies, they definitly don't have an OS monopoly these days, and that is a good thing. Everyone who wants to use other distributions is free to do so.
moksly 6y ago
I work in the Danish public sector, and while I really like what Microsoft is doing and should note that I think they’ve been our best tech business partner, (because they understand how b2b relationships need to work between tech and non-tech enterprise better than anyone else), for three decades, it’s really not a new Microsoft. They simply moved from selling windows and office licenses to selling office365 and Azure, and using open source helps them do this.
- rubber_duck 6y ago
  That is the new Microsoft - selling cloud services and subscriptions while developing a ton of OSS - naturally they are doing this for profit - but their incentives are now aligned with OSS instead of being in direct conflict.
  - raghava 6y ago
    They also enjoy getting OSS to work for MS later. MS understands very well that Cloud and SaaS is the future. And in B2B, which is their forte, MS Servers don't have much of a play. Hence, their focus is on getting that working for them. Ex. PyMSSQL is now officially supported by MS. This implies, their costs of maintaining an ODBC driver for Python-MSSQL will be largely reduced thanks to the OSS model. Same deal with Linux-Azure tooling (there have been many tools that came out), or be it .Net-Core. They are looking at "extinguishing" Linux not by doing better than competition, but rather by absorbing the competition and getting them to work for MS in the long run. Great business move, not sure for the larger ecosystem. But then, OSS will always be there. If not Linux, something else.
xigency 6y ago
I think you would have a case if they had any chance of embracing and extending OSS in a real way. Linux and Windows are on different planes. Microsoft works in personal computing. Linux is the backbone of the web. I'd like to see Windows Server "extinguish" that.
thdrdt 6y ago
Every Microsoft post has comments like yours. In the meantime the world has changed, and Microsoft has changed. And still people keep referring to eee as if this is still the same Microsoft. All the big tech companies are now making money with services. Microsoft made a lot open to Linux. Why? Because they like you to be on Azure. I really think they are not going to extinct Linux. They are going to hook you on their services and make a lot of money out of it.
skissane 6y ago
I'm in my late 30s, so I certainly remember the Microsoft and Netscape situation, and the antitrust case, from my later teenage years. I think it is different now though. Microsoft was trying to leverage their near-monopoly on the desktop into a monopoly in new markets. Now, although Microsoft retains the bulk of desktop/laptop market share, desktops and laptops are not as significant as they once were. Microsoft's attempts at the tablet and phone markets were largely unsuccessful. A lot of apps that used to be desktop-based are now web-based. For desktop apps, cross-platform development solutions (e.g. Electron) are a lot more popular than they used to be. The alternatives to Windows on desktop/laptop (macOS, Linux, ChromeOS) are arguably more compelling and more practical than they used to be. Linux, not Windows, dominates in the server space. In cloud, Microsoft is stuck in second place position. The generation coming up through the school system right now is more familiar with Google Docs than Microsoft Office. Microsoft's language platform (.NET, C#, etc) has decent marketshare but competitors such as Java and Python are ahead. So even if some people at Microsoft want to repeat Microsoft's EEE strategy from the 1990s, Microsoft doesn't really have the same foundation that it had in the 90s to make such a strategy successful. And that 90s strategy, even if it worked in the short to medium term, doesn't appear to have been a long-term success – Internet Explorer may have killed Netscape, but arguably Chrome has killed Edge. Microsoft's attempts to EEE Java likewise failed – Visual J++ and J# are history, and Java is still more popular than .Net/C#.
- diarrhea 6y ago
  Chrome killed Edge, so Edge became Chrome.
- tester34 6y ago
  Is Java actually ahead of C#? JVM yea, but Java itself as a lang + frameworks/libs like Spring? I don't think so. I may be biased, but also I've seen a lot of arguing about Java vs C# (as a langs) feature-wise
  - skissane 6y ago
    Ahead in terms of features, or ahead in terms of market share? I wasn't thinking of the former, more the later. Which one is ahead in features is debatable. Certainly C# has some goodies which Java lacks, but more recently Java has been catching up. Which one is ahead in marketshare/mindshare/ecosystem – I think Java is the clear winner here. In part because, despite Oracle's overall ownership, Java gets a lot of attention from other big vendors such as IBM and SAP and Google (putting to one side all the regrettable Oracle-Google legal issues), and a lot of focus from the open source community. By contrast, .Net is basically just Microsoft plus a boatload of small-to-medium vendors, and the .Net open source community has always been smaller than the Java open source community. (Obligatory disclaimer: I used to work for Oracle, although not directly on Java.)
kristopolous 6y ago
From everyone I know on the inside, I think the sentiment is genuine this time. Microsoft is in the IBM position of 1985. IBM made a bunch of crucial missteps because they saw the PC as part of a larger mainframe and minicomputer strategy and was unwilling to cater to the microcomputer customer as just a microcomputer customer. So they were blinded and dropped the ball a bunch. Microsoft, like IBM in the 80s doesn't have full stack monopoly anymore. But unlike IBM, they have admitted this and most importantly that they can't claw it back. IBM ran off to fairytale land trying to claw things back with OS/2, the MCA bus, and their line of PS/2 workstations. Microsoft knows this well, they built the first versions of OS/2 for IBM. Like a good general who studies the battles of the past, they're trying to do the early Apple/early Google strategy: make good products and get developers to be enthusiastic about them. Their will be new marketing opportunities opening in the future and their job is to position themselves to capture it. They won't get there by pretending like it's still 1998.
fauigerzigerk 6y ago
"Altruistic" is a category error when applied to companies. The question is to what extent and in which areas Microsoft's interests and strategies align with ours. The answer to that question has changed in recent years, especially if we consider the alternatives.

bvelica 6y ago

OK, I am one of the young ones :) What are you talking about ? Thank you!

SahAssar 6y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguis...
Jleagle 6y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguis...
dangravell 6y ago
"Embrace and extend" I think - appear to adopt or support a technology only to attempt to influence, limit and block later developments. Other examples: J#, the Office XML standards etc etc
- bvelica 6y ago
  Aaaa... yes I understand! Thank you
jez 6y ago
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extingu... The “third e” is extinguish.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
jmiskovic 6y ago
Try this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguis... This seems more like a product of love from one developer. Doesn't seem like a cunning move in some grand scheme. Companies don't have personality and even company culture is very hard to maintain across many offices spread out over the globe.

todd3834 6y ago

I’m glad I’m not the only one who sees Microsoft’s well documented playbook. Embrace (Linux on Windows yay!), Extend (Procmon for Linux yay!). Is extinguish around the corner? Then again it is different people with a seemingly different playbook. I’m still slightly uncomfortable with it.

maze-le 6y ago
They just might extinguish Windows with that. Think about it: if the next Windows release becomes just another Linux distribution with some fancy proprietary features, and proprietary driver/hardware support they just might convince enough Linux firebrands switch over. The Bulk of their income is not the sale of Windows Licenses anymore but cloud services. If enough developers get around the idea that a "Windows flavored Linux" is not such a bad thing after all, they might be able to establish it as a de-facto standard platform for desktop and servers (and someday maybe even embedded devices). I am also slightly uncomfortable with that, but they are not the player they once were back in the 90ies, they definitly don't have an OS monopoly these days, and that is a good thing. Everyone who wants to use other distributions is free to do so.

moksly 6y ago

I work in the Danish public sector, and while I really like what Microsoft is doing and should note that I think they’ve been our best tech business partner, (because they understand how b2b relationships need to work between tech and non-tech enterprise better than anyone else), for three decades, it’s really not a new Microsoft. They simply moved from selling windows and office licenses to selling office365 and Azure, and using open source helps them do this.

rubber_duck 6y ago
That is the new Microsoft - selling cloud services and subscriptions while developing a ton of OSS - naturally they are doing this for profit - but their incentives are now aligned with OSS instead of being in direct conflict.
- raghava 6y ago
  They also enjoy getting OSS to work for MS later. MS understands very well that Cloud and SaaS is the future. And in B2B, which is their forte, MS Servers don't have much of a play. Hence, their focus is on getting that working for them. Ex. PyMSSQL is now officially supported by MS. This implies, their costs of maintaining an ODBC driver for Python-MSSQL will be largely reduced thanks to the OSS model. Same deal with Linux-Azure tooling (there have been many tools that came out), or be it .Net-Core. They are looking at "extinguishing" Linux not by doing better than competition, but rather by absorbing the competition and getting them to work for MS in the long run. Great business move, not sure for the larger ecosystem. But then, OSS will always be there. If not Linux, something else.

xigency 6y ago

I think you would have a case if they had any chance of embracing and extending OSS in a real way. Linux and Windows are on different planes. Microsoft works in personal computing. Linux is the backbone of the web. I'd like to see Windows Server "extinguish" that.

thdrdt 6y ago

Every Microsoft post has comments like yours. In the meantime the world has changed, and Microsoft has changed. And still people keep referring to eee as if this is still the same Microsoft. All the big tech companies are now making money with services. Microsoft made a lot open to Linux. Why? Because they like you to be on Azure. I really think they are not going to extinct Linux. They are going to hook you on their services and make a lot of money out of it.

skissane 6y ago

I'm in my late 30s, so I certainly remember the Microsoft and Netscape situation, and the antitrust case, from my later teenage years. I think it is different now though. Microsoft was trying to leverage their near-monopoly on the desktop into a monopoly in new markets. Now, although Microsoft retains the bulk of desktop/laptop market share, desktops and laptops are not as significant as they once were. Microsoft's attempts at the tablet and phone markets were largely unsuccessful. A lot of apps that used to be desktop-based are now web-based. For desktop apps, cross-platform development solutions (e.g. Electron) are a lot more popular than they used to be. The alternatives to Windows on desktop/laptop (macOS, Linux, ChromeOS) are arguably more compelling and more practical than they used to be. Linux, not Windows, dominates in the server space. In cloud, Microsoft is stuck in second place position. The generation coming up through the school system right now is more familiar with Google Docs than Microsoft Office. Microsoft's language platform (.NET, C#, etc) has decent marketshare but competitors such as Java and Python are ahead. So even if some people at Microsoft want to repeat Microsoft's EEE strategy from the 1990s, Microsoft doesn't really have the same foundation that it had in the 90s to make such a strategy successful. And that 90s strategy, even if it worked in the short to medium term, doesn't appear to have been a long-term success – Internet Explorer may have killed Netscape, but arguably Chrome has killed Edge. Microsoft's attempts to EEE Java likewise failed – Visual J++ and J# are history, and Java is still more popular than .Net/C#.

diarrhea 6y ago
Chrome killed Edge, so Edge became Chrome.
tester34 6y ago
Is Java actually ahead of C#? JVM yea, but Java itself as a lang + frameworks/libs like Spring? I don't think so. I may be biased, but also I've seen a lot of arguing about Java vs C# (as a langs) feature-wise
- skissane 6y ago
  Ahead in terms of features, or ahead in terms of market share? I wasn't thinking of the former, more the later. Which one is ahead in features is debatable. Certainly C# has some goodies which Java lacks, but more recently Java has been catching up. Which one is ahead in marketshare/mindshare/ecosystem – I think Java is the clear winner here. In part because, despite Oracle's overall ownership, Java gets a lot of attention from other big vendors such as IBM and SAP and Google (putting to one side all the regrettable Oracle-Google legal issues), and a lot of focus from the open source community. By contrast, .Net is basically just Microsoft plus a boatload of small-to-medium vendors, and the .Net open source community has always been smaller than the Java open source community. (Obligatory disclaimer: I used to work for Oracle, although not directly on Java.)

kristopolous 6y ago

From everyone I know on the inside, I think the sentiment is genuine this time. Microsoft is in the IBM position of 1985. IBM made a bunch of crucial missteps because they saw the PC as part of a larger mainframe and minicomputer strategy and was unwilling to cater to the microcomputer customer as just a microcomputer customer. So they were blinded and dropped the ball a bunch. Microsoft, like IBM in the 80s doesn't have full stack monopoly anymore. But unlike IBM, they have admitted this and most importantly that they can't claw it back. IBM ran off to fairytale land trying to claw things back with OS/2, the MCA bus, and their line of PS/2 workstations. Microsoft knows this well, they built the first versions of OS/2 for IBM. Like a good general who studies the battles of the past, they're trying to do the early Apple/early Google strategy: make good products and get developers to be enthusiastic about them. Their will be new marketing opportunities opening in the future and their job is to position themselves to capture it. They won't get there by pretending like it's still 1998.

fauigerzigerk 6y ago

"Altruistic" is a category error when applied to companies. The question is to what extent and in which areas Microsoft's interests and strategies align with ours. The answer to that question has changed in recent years, especially if we consider the alternatives.