
Embrace, Extend, and Extinguish - doener
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish
======
danso
This is brought up every time Microsoft and Github are discussed, and it seems
like a very shallow thing to fixate on. Is it impossible that a company, with
a new CEO and leadership team, would discard a strategy from 25 years ago
(more like 50 years ago by non-tech industry timescales)? Especially now that
its market dominance is fundamentally different and reduced (likely
permanently) compared to the 90s? What evidence is there that Nadella is a
Manchurian candidate for Ballmer forces?

Note that my issue with EXX being brought up is that it is superficial, to the
point of being deceptive to the kind of threats Microsoft+Github are most
likely to pose if Nadella et al do have their own malicious plans. But I think
Microsoft's support for a healthy OSS ecosystem, via Github and things like VS
Code, is genuine. Not necessarily out of altruism, but because it's one of the
few ways they can have an edge into the future and not fall into stagnation
like IBM.

~~~
nindalf
I think you underestimate a few things

\- How great it feels to make dire predictions about the future. Only I can
see how terrible M$'s latest move is going to be. The other sheeple can't.
When I'm right I'll tell everyone I told them so.

\- How satisfying it is to educate these younguns with their JS frameworks.
They don't have my wisdom and experience so I'm doing my duty to society and
HN by sharing with them. I will paste links to wikipedia wherever necessary.
Like so ->
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguis...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish)

\- how smart I'll look by talking cynically. Every action that someone takes
will be followed by a cynical analysis which assumes the worst intentions.
Wide eyed optimists will look naive to any person lacking context.

~~~
nal10
People were shouted down here 5-10 years ago for predicting that Google might
turn evil, now it's almost a mainstream opinion here.

You know, simple predictions are often correct. But ignore it (especially if
your salary depends on it).

~~~
nurb
Salary is no excuse, just avoid working for ill-intention companies. You'll
feel better and the world will be as well.

This is the only way to make a difference.

~~~
r00fus
Making conscience-free salary doesn't necessarily mean it'll always be that
way. Companies change, people change.

Are you suggesting people change companies every time they uncover their
existing employer did something unethical/immoral?

I say this as someone whose employer in the past turned into a patent troll -
as a new parent and during a downturn it was difficult to switch jobs for
quite some time.

------
mncharity
EEE is, among other things, a pattern of incentives.

Embrace: We care about our customers. If someone other than us creates
something that would be valuable to them, of course we're going to embrace it.
To do otherwise, would be a Not Invented Here failure, would be to let down
our customers.

Extend: We care about our customers. We are a major center of innovation,
working constantly to improve things for them. We're not going to hold back on
helping them just because some standards committee is moving like cold
molasses, riven by politics, technically tasteless, or has conflict interests
optimizing for things other than the best interests of our customers. And
we're certainly not going to later break things for our customers merely
because some committee eventually decides it wants things done differently.
They're just committees. More people are benefiting from our work than theirs.
We're not going to hurt our customers just because some committees have a
disproportionate sense of entitlement and importantance.

Extinguish: We care about our customers. And those who are potentially our
customers. We want to make it as easy as possible for people to gain the
benefits of being our customers. The health of our competitors, and even of
people unfortunate to not yet be our customers, are not our motivating
responsibility. We're focused on our customers, and what happens to that
portion of the industry that isn't, can't be what we optimize for. And we're
just a normal commercial company, so of course we're not going to fail to
compete with our competitors. If nothing else, we owe it to their customers
who may soon be ours. And of course to our stockholders.

Much evil in the world is arguably an emergent property of regrettable
incentives.

I mention this only because this post is for whatever reason trending today,
and past discussions have repeatedly been of unusually disappointing quality
for tech topic on HN. Perhaps this comment will help prune some of the
inevitable "but they're good people now, not evil, so there's no problem"
comments.

~~~
mercer
I don't see how you could be any more up the ass of bad incentives.

Nobody disputes that Microsoft's incentives are 'regrettable', so what point
are you really trying to make?

~~~
core-questions
> so what point are you really trying to make?

Incentives can result in individuals making "good" decisions relative to their
environment that result in organizations making "bad" decisions relative to
the playing field as a whole.

This is essentially the Tragedy of the Commons on a meta-scale, and requires
regulation or sovereign action to overcome.

------
factorialboy
VS Code. GitHub. NPM. VS Code Online. GitHub CodeSpaces. Integrated Azure.

A ten year old today learning programming will be locked in. As will JS
yuppies and the extremely articulate product manager types.

I like it. Gives me an opportunity to become a "thought leader" by promoting
the UNIX approach to enterprises in 5-10 years.

~~~
jswny
\- VSCode is open source, so I'm not sure how that constitutes lock in.
Switching text editors is pretty easy.

\- GitHub has some special things like issues and pull requests but in general
you can just switch your origin URL to another Git repository that isn't
GitHub and boom you are off GitHub.

\- NPM you can just point your package.json at any Git repository you want, no
need to use the NPM package repo.

\- VSCode Online: like I said, just use a different online editor.

Not too much lock in going on here. Integrations and seamless workflow? Sure.
But lock in? No I don't think so.

~~~
nindalf
> Switching text editors is pretty easy.

Not only is it easy, VS Code made it easier than ever. By creating protocols
for language and debugger support, they've liberated future text editor
developers from having to support every language under the sun. By adding
support for the protocol, the new text editor automatically gains support for
all languages.

~~~
viklove
The same way Slack used to have an IRC bridge, but they shut that down once
they were the leading market player.

This is literally the Embrace/Extend part of EEE

~~~
nindalf
Oh? And what’s the play after that? How are they going to shut down the
protocol or language servers?

Even if they remove support for the protocols, those language and debugging
servers still exist. Those servers are controlled by a wide variety of
organisations, all of whom are committed to supporting the entire ecosystem of
editors.

It doesn’t take much to regurgitate “EEE” on an MS article. If you can’t even
imagine how the final E works in a specific case, maybe say nothing at all.

~~~
viklove
They'll just disable support for it in VSCode. Got a brain up there buddy? Or
maybe you're just an MS shill.

------
neogodless
With meaningful competition, the game is elevated for everyone. Those
competing must win on merit, and those watching and consuming get the best
output.

When Microsoft was the dominant software Goliath, they were winning in
business and personal computing. The internet was new and they wanted to win
that - not necessarily by being the best, but by using their leverage.

In the current environment, Microsoft is still winning in a lot of areas of
business - competitive if not dominant. They have meaningful positions (but
also competitors) in cloud hosting, operating systems and productivity
software.

In my opinion, we're in a good place for a lot of these vectors. Cloud has
Azure, AWS and GCP (though I don't know how well GCP is competing.) Operating
systems have the classic gorilla in Windows, the polished closed system macOS
and the persistent open source varieties of Linux. They are all meaningfully
competitive.

Mobile is probably the weakest area, in my opinion. I wish Microsoft was still
competing with Windows Phone here, because I don't love my Android and iOS
options. They are good and they do what I need. I'm not confident I could
switch between them easily (the way I am mostly confident I can switch between
Windows, macOS and Linux).

(Online advertising is clearly the realm of Facebook and Google.)

I'm not sure how to summarize, but I don't think Microsoft is the same
800-pound gorilla that stuck us with Internet Explorer 6 for way too long.
They'll (as long as they can) always be ambitiously seeking dominance in
profitable software-related markets. They'll never be 100% charitable or
philanthropic. And neither will their competitors. Is there a useful rubric or
framework to think about all this?

What are personal decisions you can make that aren't too painful, but matter
on the grand scale of these massive companies?

~~~
Doches
+1, and I wish more folks thought about Microsoft/Google/Amazon/etc this way.
What we're seeing with Github, LinkedIn, Azure -- all the modernish MS moves
-- feels more like the sleeping giant is waking up and _competing_, not like
an 800-pound goliath throwing its weight around to extinguish competition.
Github vs Gitlab is a _healthy_ competition, to the benefit of everyone
(including MS and Gitlab!), same with Azure vs AWS vs GCP.

This is a _good_ state we're in, not a bad one.

------
runawaybottle
Well in that case, Microsoft is really targeting developers.

VSCode, Typescript, Github, WSL, the inevitable tie into Azure...

I wonder how this all ends.

We can short circuit some of the inevitability I guess, still holding out for
this: [https://panic.com/nova/](https://panic.com/nova/)

Looks like Deno already adopted Typescript, but the world doesn’t have to
revolve around Github.

AWS and Azure will keep each other honest.

Edit: I’ll add that I really really don’t think Microsoft wants to proselytize
developers into it’s ecosystem just to make apps for Windows. I really think
they are going to try mobile again.

~~~
minxomat
Not to forget LinkedIn, which is now being deeply integrated with O365, which
has gained MyAnalytics (or whatever it's called) which is for all intents an
automated "productivity" tracking software that aims to capture the time
you're working, who you work with and how you spend your time.

I wonder when that data will be exposed on LinkedIn (hey recruiters, this guy
is working late hours a lot!).

And then the eventual integration of that dystopian system with MS's developer
monopoly. Now we have a truly "boring dystopia".

The worst part is: MS now has all the tools for this and more.

~~~
abakker
I've been waiting for the integration of active directory and linkedIn. It
seems only a slight stretch to think of using corporate data and social data
for cross-validation of true Identity.

------
type0
Eclipse is making open-source registry for VS Code extensions [https://open-
vsx.org](https://open-vsx.org)

support it if you are afraid that MS could pull the plug on their Marketplace
in a few years

------
aklemm
I’ll never forget muttering that to myself when Washington state passed a law
banning smoking within 25 feet of doorways, but Microsoft made it 30 feet on
the signage on campus.

------
foobar_
Extinguish only works if it is a monopoly. Back in the day Microsoft had a
monopoly on the PC operating system market and microsoft tried to extinguish
the web. Microsoft still has lots of monopolistic practices built into the
bootloader. Not sure if driver makers are forced to work only with windows
these days but thats definitely the case with hololens.

It would be more interesting for microsoft to take a stance on privacy like
apple.

------
ekr
I'd love to hear Torvalds' opinion on this DirectX PR. In any case, as someone
who hates complexity and loves simple software (in the suckless sense),
whenever I see these monstrosities get merged into the kernel, it makes me
search for alternatives. There was a time when the kernel codebase was small
and easily understandable by 1 person, apart from the drivers. Apparently
simplicity and keeping complexity at bay is no longer a goal for Linux.

BSDs do a bit better here, but they are still behind on several metrics. Maybe
this will be the main motivation for the next successful kernel? The fact the
Linux simply got too big and complex?

~~~
mjevans
As some of the replies on the LKML suggest (
[https://lkml.org/lkml/2020/5/19/742](https://lkml.org/lkml/2020/5/19/742) )
having this as a simple accelerator pipe, but simple in the Linux perspective
of re-using as many conventions and existing infrastructure as possible, and
living _not_ as a display adapter (which will surely become far more complex
later) would probably work for everyone; right now.

The question is strongly dependent on future developments. With this being
contributed as a GPU driver and the likely hope of this being used to run
Linux applications within another OS, the question might be re-framed:

How is this addition to the Linux Kernel API going to benefit _all_ users of
Linux, not just users of WSL?

Were Microsoft trying to provide a thin abstraction layer, so that drawing to
a vGPU shard from windows on the application facing side of the Linux Kernel
API looked like any other standard GPU under Linux, I feel it very likely
everyone would feel positively about the changes.

If this were about contributing Microsoft's vGPU driver for Linux, and in so
doing also implementing only Freely Implementable Industry Standards (like
Vulcan, OpenGL, or maybe others that Microsoft made/makes similarly free),
while also not neglecting the expected core standards for other GPU drivers,
then that also seems logically acceptable for everyone.

Though my above suppositions are purely my opinion and guesses about the
opinions of the maintainers for the software, while trying to think about how
they approach their inherent responsibility for the long term maintenance and
stability of a project they are clearly passionate about.

------
badrabbit
__Cisco has entered the chat __

------
Shared404
Saw this while scrolling Reddit, and thought it is relevant here as well.

[https://medium.com/@probonopd/microsoft-loves-linux-a-
little...](https://medium.com/@probonopd/microsoft-loves-linux-a-little-too-
much-cff91023e4b8)

------
SllX
Was thinking about this earlier, saw some article about how Microsoft is
trying to get Windows 10 to run Linux GUI apps.

But also Spotify! There's a strain of thought out there that the podcast
ecosystem is resistant to centralization, but Spotify is making a serious go
at proving this wrong.

~~~
parliament32
>saw some article about how Microsoft is trying to get Windows 10 to run Linux
GUI apps

I thought that exact same thing when I saw that article yesterday.

Interestingly Linux has its own corporate champion: Redhat/Poettering.
Currently they're the villain in most Linux circles, but it'll be interesting
to see them and MS square off, as they inevitably will.

------
enumjorge
Anyone have context as to why this is on the front page?

~~~
whalesalad
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitio...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitions_by_Microsoft)

Microsoft is taking over the world. They now own Github, NPM, Citus data,
LinkedIn and a ton of other companies. Not to mention they have a trojan horse
on almost every new developers machine thanks to TS and VSCode, and all of the
data and services that companies are trusting to them on Azure. They are
poised to become a data king.

TBH... if I had a bunch of liquid cash to fuck around with I would be buying a
ton of MSFT becuase my gut is telling me they are going to really take a huge
slice of the open source development pie here in the next few years.

They know that is the market they need to capitalize on which is why all these
acquisitions and investments are happening.

~~~
Slackwise
There are a lot of young developers that just have no context for what
Microsoft did in the past. If you bring up their past, they say "that was so
long ago" or "but they've changed!"

But public companies are not _people_.

Of course they change -- _tactics_ \-- and try to gain control again.
Everything they do will in the end have to be justified to their shareholders
and how it will either gain them profit either now or in the long run, and as
soon as the fickle-minded shareholders change their tune, out goes Nadella,
and we'll get another Balmer or worse.

~~~
whalesalad
I’m on the fence. I resonate with your take on things, but I also have a bit
of hope in me as well. At least outwardly their optics are looking much better
and brighter, but I’m not sure what the real culture is like at present day.

~~~
seph-reed
Your optimism is inherently misplaced. Power is corruptive. Even if the people
in power now aren't corrupted, there is no fail-safe in place to pull the plug
if they ever hand off that power to someone who can't control it. It will
happen, it always does.

There is historically no such thing as a trustworthy super-power unless it
subsists overwhelmingly on the support of discerning people.

------
fithisux
It is strictly my personal opinion. From the WSL + Direct X announcement of
today, I see the same old M$ that I knew 20 years ago. They simply learnt new
tricks.

------
maallooc
Microsoft does things well. If you don't want EEE to happen, just be better
than Microsoft. As a consumer we just don't care whether Microsoft is the axis
of evil or something. We don't give a f. We just want things to work and work
well.

~~~
parliament32
If you're the "just work" type go buy Apple devices and be done with it. Not
all of us want fisher-price-style products.

~~~
immigrantsheep
so apple is ok but microsoft is not? because...?

~~~
tmotwu
Microsoft's recent involvement to open source is currently a bigger threat to
OSX than it ever was to Linux.

Users who use Linux distros are content with their overall desktop experience
in the absence of closed-source libraries such as DirectX, etc. They were
never the target audience Microsoft gains from embracing because not many
would have felt the incentive to do so. Especially considering their efforts
to port and upstream changes to the kernel, lessening the allure. Albeit not
that Microsoft is doing this out of the goodness of their hearts, they benefit
from doing so.

Meanwhile, the Apple developer ecosystem has not made any significant strides.
It has been a while since homebrew that OSX has gotten a useful developer
tool, and ever since Lattner departed from both of his projects related to
Swift (TF), it has slowly been losing traction.

Many Mac users choose OSX for the neat desktop experience Linux struggled to
offer, and the *nix-like interface Microsoft had been missing. WSL and
Microsoft's recent contributions to Linux has changed the Windows developer
experience significantly, giving many previously hesitant Mac shops the nod.

~~~
immigrantsheep
I wrote this in another comment so I'm just gonna repost it here. I really
don't get how is this a problem. Now you can use acceleration for ML under
WSL. Great. If you don't want to do that, what's stopping you from using ML on
native Linux as you're doing right now? They are not changing Linux. They are
adding something to Windows. Why are you all so threatened all the time? Even
if Microsoft does... idk what you think it will do, you can still use your
favorite flavor of linux with the tools you want, the language you want, the
framework you want.

And to quote many people from open source: you still have the source code so
if there is something you don't like you can always change it and build a
version that better suits your needs.

How is IBM's or Oracle's involvement in open source not a bad things? Is
Oracle really someone who's suddenly ok?

From all these comments, all I see is: someone is going to build a different
toy and many will want to play with that instead of this.

"Many Mac users choose OSX for the neat desktop experience Linux struggled to
offer, and the *nix-like interface Microsoft had been missing. WSL and
Microsoft's recent contributions to Linux has changed the Windows developer
experience significantly, giving many previously hesitant Mac shops the nod."
Okay, so? It's Windows. Feel free to ignore it. How does that threaten your
emacs/node/c/python/gnome/tensorflow working environment?

When docker wasn't working on Windows nobody cared. Why should I have to
install vmware or dualboot just because someone can't be bothered to make
docker work normally on windows?

~~~
pritambaral
> Now you can use acceleration for ML under WSL.

Using libdxd12.so, which is closed source and works only under WSL.

> They are not changing Linux.

They are literally asking the Linux kernel to pull in their changes to add a
proxy to Windows's device driver model to the Linux kernel. No changes to
Windows; all changes to Linux.

> They are adding something to Windows.

Windows already has DirectX, so no, they are not adding something to Windows.

> Why are you all so threatened all the time?

Because MS has a proven track-record of screwing others over. It is only wise
to heed a potential threat.

