4 ms·

Given the whole outrage over Apple taking advantage of customers' willingness to hand over control of their phones to them, I hope folks can see the parallels h

by cle 5y ago

Given the whole outrage over Apple taking advantage of customers' willingness to hand over control of their phones to them, I hope folks can see the parallels here and reject this. At this point Microsoft's strategy around GitHub, VS Code, Copilot, etc. should be pretty obvious, and we should all be running for the hills.

dividedbyzero 5y ago
> At this point Microsoft's strategy around GitHub, VS Code, etc. should be pretty obvious As someone not following this closely, what would that strategy be?
- didibus 5y ago
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extingu...
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - geofft 5y ago
    What are they embracing, how are they extending it, and how do they plan to extinguish it? My understanding of EEE is that it involves taking some competitive product/standard, making a cool MS version of it, and then killing off the standard version - e.g. implementing a barely sufficient POSIX layer on Windows, getting customers who have "POSIX" as a purchasing requirement to switch, and then getting them onto the NT API. Most of the examples on that wiki page have been unsuccessful (IE trying to EEE HTML, Outlook trying to EEE SMTP, etc.), because they weren't able to get enough people to rely on the extended version and stop using the standard thing. What is the analogy here? Microsoft wants to embrace and extend... compiling software? and will kill off... existing ways of compiling software? How will this work?
    - z77dj3kl 5y ago
      It's a slightly different flavor of the same thing. VS Code is an amazing tool that's getting huge adoption because of how awesome it is, and how open source and community centric it is, etc. They've gotten a lot of mindshare and dev love, that's the embrace bit. The next step is the set of closed source addons. Have you noticed that a lot of the new VS Code features are now in addons that are under a different license. This includes the new remote dev and python tooling. Still free to use and awesome tools, of course, but fully under MS exclusive and controlled. That's the extend. I don't know what the longer-term plan is. I'm hoping that it won't lead to an extinguish. But if that's what they want, then they could e.g. cripple the open source version, moving all their dev effort into a closed-source, Azure/Github only web environment. Who knows?
      - metaltyphoon 5y ago
        Gotta love how the goal post just keeps moving forward.
        Aeolun 5y ago
        More like you never know when they’ll initate the final part of their strategy. Half the dev world is now used to VS code. Many junior developers have never used anything else. Whatever they do can have a big impact.
        didibus 5y ago
        I don't see what post was moved, this is exactly EEE, adopt an open strategy, extend it with proprietary extensions, don't let competition use those extensions, extinguish competition by not being able to interface with your proprietary extensions while having created an expectation from the user for them to be available.
    - georgeecollins 5y ago
      >> What is the analogy here? Microsoft wants to embrace and extend... compiling software? and will kill off... existing ways of compiling software? How will this work? Microsoft is embracing free development tools that compete with purchased tools they sold. SourceSafe vs Git, Eclipse vs Visual Studio.. those are terrible examples but you get what I mean. So you make a free tier of VS, you buy git hub etc. Extend.. you try to make your tools as ubiquitous as possible. You convince hobbyists and students that they should use your platform because it is more powerful /useful.. it will help you get a job later. This part of the strategy seems really hard because there are so many development tools that are open source, and lots of companies like IBM, Oracle, Google want to keep one of their own safely under their control. Extinguish. You add features that only really work on your platform, or work better. Think about trying to develop for Android not on Android Studio. I haven't used VS for a Windows project in a long time but I assume it has similar advantages. Or Intel's compilers used to be the first to work with new instructions. Ideally people would "have" to use your platform and you can start taxing them for that, either with fees or requirements that they implement your initiatives. Think about Google pushing Kotlin.. Android Studio kind of defaults to that now. Of how it supports Firebase, or defaults new projects in segments. I am not mad about that it or anything, it may just be a good idea. But it shows how if you control the dominant tech platform you can support your initiatives. This isn't something that keeps me awake at night because a number of tech companies are working to promote their own semi-proprietary or open development platforms. But the fact that so many go to the trouble to do that shows it is a concern.
syshum 5y ago
Some could even call it Embrace, Extend, Extinguish... hmmmm.......

by cle 5y ago

dividedbyzero 5y ago

> At this point Microsoft's strategy around GitHub, VS Code, etc. should be pretty obvious As someone not following this closely, what would that strategy be?

didibus 5y ago
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extingu...
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- geofft 5y ago
  What are they embracing, how are they extending it, and how do they plan to extinguish it? My understanding of EEE is that it involves taking some competitive product/standard, making a cool MS version of it, and then killing off the standard version - e.g. implementing a barely sufficient POSIX layer on Windows, getting customers who have "POSIX" as a purchasing requirement to switch, and then getting them onto the NT API. Most of the examples on that wiki page have been unsuccessful (IE trying to EEE HTML, Outlook trying to EEE SMTP, etc.), because they weren't able to get enough people to rely on the extended version and stop using the standard thing. What is the analogy here? Microsoft wants to embrace and extend... compiling software? and will kill off... existing ways of compiling software? How will this work?
  - z77dj3kl 5y ago
    It's a slightly different flavor of the same thing. VS Code is an amazing tool that's getting huge adoption because of how awesome it is, and how open source and community centric it is, etc. They've gotten a lot of mindshare and dev love, that's the embrace bit. The next step is the set of closed source addons. Have you noticed that a lot of the new VS Code features are now in addons that are under a different license. This includes the new remote dev and python tooling. Still free to use and awesome tools, of course, but fully under MS exclusive and controlled. That's the extend. I don't know what the longer-term plan is. I'm hoping that it won't lead to an extinguish. But if that's what they want, then they could e.g. cripple the open source version, moving all their dev effort into a closed-source, Azure/Github only web environment. Who knows?
    - metaltyphoon 5y ago
      Gotta love how the goal post just keeps moving forward.
      - Aeolun 5y ago
        More like you never know when they’ll initate the final part of their strategy. Half the dev world is now used to VS code. Many junior developers have never used anything else. Whatever they do can have a big impact.
      - didibus 5y ago
        I don't see what post was moved, this is exactly EEE, adopt an open strategy, extend it with proprietary extensions, don't let competition use those extensions, extinguish competition by not being able to interface with your proprietary extensions while having created an expectation from the user for them to be available.
  - georgeecollins 5y ago
    >> What is the analogy here? Microsoft wants to embrace and extend... compiling software? and will kill off... existing ways of compiling software? How will this work? Microsoft is embracing free development tools that compete with purchased tools they sold. SourceSafe vs Git, Eclipse vs Visual Studio.. those are terrible examples but you get what I mean. So you make a free tier of VS, you buy git hub etc. Extend.. you try to make your tools as ubiquitous as possible. You convince hobbyists and students that they should use your platform because it is more powerful /useful.. it will help you get a job later. This part of the strategy seems really hard because there are so many development tools that are open source, and lots of companies like IBM, Oracle, Google want to keep one of their own safely under their control. Extinguish. You add features that only really work on your platform, or work better. Think about trying to develop for Android not on Android Studio. I haven't used VS for a Windows project in a long time but I assume it has similar advantages. Or Intel's compilers used to be the first to work with new instructions. Ideally people would "have" to use your platform and you can start taxing them for that, either with fees or requirements that they implement your initiatives. Think about Google pushing Kotlin.. Android Studio kind of defaults to that now. Of how it supports Firebase, or defaults new projects in segments. I am not mad about that it or anything, it may just be a good idea. But it shows how if you control the dominant tech platform you can support your initiatives. This isn't something that keeps me awake at night because a number of tech companies are working to promote their own semi-proprietary or open development platforms. But the fact that so many go to the trouble to do that shows it is a concern.

syshum 5y ago

Some could even call it Embrace, Extend, Extinguish... hmmmm.......