5 ms·

Remember the typical Microsoft: "embrace, extend, extinguish" ...

by greatgib 5y ago

user-the-name 5y ago
What exactly is it you are saying they are embracing, extending or extinguishing here?
- dmm 5y ago
  vscode is open source but many of the most interesting features are proprietary, making the use of anything but the official build impossible for many use cases. A few weeks ago I investigated using an embedded version of vscode to create containerized dev environments for an internal developer platform we're working on. The hope was to allow devs to write and debug code from inside a k8s container by using vscode inside their browser. Very similar to the newly announced codespaces feature. Unfortunately, there were several factors that made this impractical. The extension marketplace can only be used with the official build. There are at least two alternatives but both were missing extensions that our devs used. Also, the c# debugger is proprietary and only works with official vscode build. From that experience I believe that while the core editor features of vscode are open source, "Visual Studio Code" the tool that people actually use is defacto proprietary and entirely controlled by Microsoft.
  - user-the-name 5y ago
    None of which has anything to do with "embrace, extend, extinguish". That just means they are not wanting to fully commit to open sourcing their own editor.
    - CRConrad 5y ago
      It has everything to do with it. Their open-sourcing stuff is just the modern form of the "embrace", and that open-sourcing being only partial is the very epitome of "extend". The "extinguish" is obviously yet to come, but turning a blind eye to it certainly won't help stave it off. And trying to fog others' vision to it is... Less than a good look.
- Zababa 5y ago
  Open source development, starting with Javascript/Typescript. Microsoft own Typescript, VSCode, Github, Azure and NPM. It's not hard to imagine in the future an online dev environment that works with all of these technologies together. But this environment won't have an open source counterpart. Embrace: Buy Github, NPM, develop VScode, Typescript, Azure. Extend & extinguish: make all of them work together really well in a way that can't be reproduce by the open soure community. I think it's a bit early to say that they are embracing and extinguishing at this point, but I wasn't here last time and may be biaised because I find these tools incredibly convenient. In a way, Microsoft is leveraging their unique advantage over other cloud vendors, which is their proximity with developers.
  - user-the-name 5y ago
    What is the "extinguish" part?
    - Zababa 5y ago
      According to Wikipedia: "Extinguish: When extensions become a de facto standard because of their dominant market share, they marginalize competitors that do not or cannot support the new extensions." So if your text editor doesn't support integration with Github and a cloud vendor, or if your repositories don't support integration with an online text editor and a cloud vendor, or if your cloud vendor doesn't support integration with Github and an online text editor, this will affect your market share. I think the end goal is around "developer mindshare" (which, I admit, is a really vague concept), especially in web applications. By assembling all that they have, they can create an experience no one else can, all while leveraging open source tools. You could also imagine an integration with education (Github student pack, Azure credits, etc). At this point, they could dominate the web app market because no one else can offer such a deep integration across the stack. I think one of the differences with the "old" EEE would be that instead of intentionally crippling certain features, they are instead focusing on giving the best-in-class experience. If you consider that it's just regular competition and not EEE because of that, that's totally fair. Still, I think that we should still be wary of domination. Competition is what's pushing Microsoft to develop all those wonderful tools, and I fear that with domination they might become complacent and abuse their position.
- CRConrad 5y ago
  The PC; the whole idea of a universe of independent microcomputers. Microsoft, Amazon, Google (and Facebook?) each have their own angle on it, but seem to be moving towards the same goal: a return to the old model of centralised computing, with the Web as the substrate, your "PC" reduced to a graphical terminal, and their servers as the mainframe. The difference in angles is partly just that they each want their servers to be the main mainframe, not those of one of the others; and partly because they're each coming at it from different directions, each trying to play off of their own strengths. But the goal and direction? All absolutely the same. The best we can hope for (if I'm being pessimistic) is probably that none of them wins outright, but instead we get a shaky balance between as many as possible of them.
junon 5y ago
For those unaware: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguis... > "Embrace, extend, and extinguish" (EEE) . . . is a phrase that the U.S. Department of Justice found that was used internally by Microsoft to describe its strategy for entering product categories involving widely used standards, extending those standards with proprietary capabilities, and then using those differences in order to strongly disadvantage its competitors. This is a completely valid reason to be concerned with these sorts of things now that GitHub is owned and operated by Microsoft. They continue these practices today, and GitHub is no exception.
- teekert 5y ago
  You get downvoted but I also have that little voice in my head. I keep thinking about hitting a point of no return with my dependency on Microsoft. But I'm not there yet, I could untangle fairly quickly, fairly painlessly. Moreover, many of MS' recent stuff is FOSS, they can change it, but we can fork it. And competitors like GitLab are still alive and kicking, not suffering by the looks of it. But the little voice indeed remains.
  - junon 5y ago
    Yeah the downvotes don't surprise me, but their strategy has existed historically - proven, as it were - and thus I have to assume they still employ these tactics. At least from the outside, it sure seems so.
    - teekert 5y ago
      Tbh I think they have bettered themselves. I'm not so afraid of it. Companies can change, Satya is an admirable man, he always comes across as wise. Well, I guess the same could be said of Ballmer, some videos being a BIG exception of course. But it doesn't hurt to keep an eye on them ;)
pjmlp 5y ago
Except everyone is on the game to bring back timesharing as main computing model, Microsoft isn't alone. Outside games, even most native mobile apps don't work without their timesharing infrastructure.
greatgib 5y ago
Looks like there are some Microsoft fan boys here... For the others, that does not know the concept that was applied by them numerous times, it's easy: - embrace: they buy GitHub, play nice, be part of the community, we will change nothing, commit to open source spirit - extend [current step]: oh, we are just adding nice features, now you will use our visual studio, but don't worry, it's for free, it just improve your experience. - extinguish [next step, my guess]: * "sadly, VS works better in edge and does not support minor browsers like Firefox", * there are these cool new synchronization features/real time collaboration that requires Visual Studio on your computer. * Sorry, you need an official VS build to use the features because security/authentication/... * Here are the corporate workspace accounts that allows to limit code edition in the cloud, for security. And so, for security also, you can only use it from edge on windows X with TPM. Based on previous MS experiences, the possibility are endless! I would kindly remind that the version of VisualStudioCode that almost everyone use is just a freeware but it can't be built as is from ope source code. Also, not long so long ago they were willing to switch everyone GitHub accounts with Microsoft accounts...

Remember the typical Microsoft: "embrace, extend, extinguish" ...

user-the-name 5y ago

What exactly is it you are saying they are embracing, extending or extinguishing here?

dmm 5y ago
vscode is open source but many of the most interesting features are proprietary, making the use of anything but the official build impossible for many use cases. A few weeks ago I investigated using an embedded version of vscode to create containerized dev environments for an internal developer platform we're working on. The hope was to allow devs to write and debug code from inside a k8s container by using vscode inside their browser. Very similar to the newly announced codespaces feature. Unfortunately, there were several factors that made this impractical. The extension marketplace can only be used with the official build. There are at least two alternatives but both were missing extensions that our devs used. Also, the c# debugger is proprietary and only works with official vscode build. From that experience I believe that while the core editor features of vscode are open source, "Visual Studio Code" the tool that people actually use is defacto proprietary and entirely controlled by Microsoft.
- user-the-name 5y ago
  None of which has anything to do with "embrace, extend, extinguish". That just means they are not wanting to fully commit to open sourcing their own editor.
  - CRConrad 5y ago
    It has everything to do with it. Their open-sourcing stuff is just the modern form of the "embrace", and that open-sourcing being only partial is the very epitome of "extend". The "extinguish" is obviously yet to come, but turning a blind eye to it certainly won't help stave it off. And trying to fog others' vision to it is... Less than a good look.
Zababa 5y ago
Open source development, starting with Javascript/Typescript. Microsoft own Typescript, VSCode, Github, Azure and NPM. It's not hard to imagine in the future an online dev environment that works with all of these technologies together. But this environment won't have an open source counterpart. Embrace: Buy Github, NPM, develop VScode, Typescript, Azure. Extend & extinguish: make all of them work together really well in a way that can't be reproduce by the open soure community. I think it's a bit early to say that they are embracing and extinguishing at this point, but I wasn't here last time and may be biaised because I find these tools incredibly convenient. In a way, Microsoft is leveraging their unique advantage over other cloud vendors, which is their proximity with developers.
- user-the-name 5y ago
  What is the "extinguish" part?
  - Zababa 5y ago
    According to Wikipedia: "Extinguish: When extensions become a de facto standard because of their dominant market share, they marginalize competitors that do not or cannot support the new extensions." So if your text editor doesn't support integration with Github and a cloud vendor, or if your repositories don't support integration with an online text editor and a cloud vendor, or if your cloud vendor doesn't support integration with Github and an online text editor, this will affect your market share. I think the end goal is around "developer mindshare" (which, I admit, is a really vague concept), especially in web applications. By assembling all that they have, they can create an experience no one else can, all while leveraging open source tools. You could also imagine an integration with education (Github student pack, Azure credits, etc). At this point, they could dominate the web app market because no one else can offer such a deep integration across the stack. I think one of the differences with the "old" EEE would be that instead of intentionally crippling certain features, they are instead focusing on giving the best-in-class experience. If you consider that it's just regular competition and not EEE because of that, that's totally fair. Still, I think that we should still be wary of domination. Competition is what's pushing Microsoft to develop all those wonderful tools, and I fear that with domination they might become complacent and abuse their position.
CRConrad 5y ago
The PC; the whole idea of a universe of independent microcomputers. Microsoft, Amazon, Google (and Facebook?) each have their own angle on it, but seem to be moving towards the same goal: a return to the old model of centralised computing, with the Web as the substrate, your "PC" reduced to a graphical terminal, and their servers as the mainframe. The difference in angles is partly just that they each want their servers to be the main mainframe, not those of one of the others; and partly because they're each coming at it from different directions, each trying to play off of their own strengths. But the goal and direction? All absolutely the same. The best we can hope for (if I'm being pessimistic) is probably that none of them wins outright, but instead we get a shaky balance between as many as possible of them.

junon 5y ago

For those unaware: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguis... > "Embrace, extend, and extinguish" (EEE) . . . is a phrase that the U.S. Department of Justice found that was used internally by Microsoft to describe its strategy for entering product categories involving widely used standards, extending those standards with proprietary capabilities, and then using those differences in order to strongly disadvantage its competitors. This is a completely valid reason to be concerned with these sorts of things now that GitHub is owned and operated by Microsoft. They continue these practices today, and GitHub is no exception.

teekert 5y ago
You get downvoted but I also have that little voice in my head. I keep thinking about hitting a point of no return with my dependency on Microsoft. But I'm not there yet, I could untangle fairly quickly, fairly painlessly. Moreover, many of MS' recent stuff is FOSS, they can change it, but we can fork it. And competitors like GitLab are still alive and kicking, not suffering by the looks of it. But the little voice indeed remains.
- junon 5y ago
  Yeah the downvotes don't surprise me, but their strategy has existed historically - proven, as it were - and thus I have to assume they still employ these tactics. At least from the outside, it sure seems so.
  - teekert 5y ago
    Tbh I think they have bettered themselves. I'm not so afraid of it. Companies can change, Satya is an admirable man, he always comes across as wise. Well, I guess the same could be said of Ballmer, some videos being a BIG exception of course. But it doesn't hurt to keep an eye on them ;)

pjmlp 5y ago

Except everyone is on the game to bring back timesharing as main computing model, Microsoft isn't alone. Outside games, even most native mobile apps don't work without their timesharing infrastructure.

greatgib 5y ago

Looks like there are some Microsoft fan boys here... For the others, that does not know the concept that was applied by them numerous times, it's easy: - embrace: they buy GitHub, play nice, be part of the community, we will change nothing, commit to open source spirit - extend [current step]: oh, we are just adding nice features, now you will use our visual studio, but don't worry, it's for free, it just improve your experience. - extinguish [next step, my guess]: * "sadly, VS works better in edge and does not support minor browsers like Firefox", * there are these cool new synchronization features/real time collaboration that requires Visual Studio on your computer. * Sorry, you need an official VS build to use the features because security/authentication/... * Here are the corporate workspace accounts that allows to limit code edition in the cloud, for security. And so, for security also, you can only use it from edge on windows X with TPM. Based on previous MS experiences, the possibility are endless! I would kindly remind that the version of VisualStudioCode that almost everyone use is just a freeware but it can't be built as is from ope source code. Also, not long so long ago they were willing to switch everyone GitHub accounts with Microsoft accounts...