Why? I mean it's clearly Embrace. But Embrace and Extend are the goals of OSS. MS is a for profit company true. But OSS has never been anti-profit. The last E is problematic of course and MS has a history of going for Extinguish in the past. However I haven't seen any sign of that behavior in the current leadership and they've been doing their thing for a while now. You may not believe MS can change and you may not trust them. But that's a faith statement right now not a fact statement.
I think, Microsoft clearly understands that Linux is not going anywhere, but they can try to limit where it goes instead of trying to make it go away.
Linux has two fronts: Server and Desktop. It's clearly won in server space, in some very important categories.
But, what if Microsoft can make Windows attractive enough, so it can run Linux applications without the Linux desktop itself, and prevent developers from installing a bona fide distribution to their boxes alongside Windows? With this, they can
- Add some proprietary extensions to WSL to keep some dev tools trapped
- Double down on secure boot and key management, citing "We can run these applications anyway, where's the monopoly?"
- Slow down adoption of desktop Linux installations
Hence, push Linux to server space to reclaim the "creative/young" desktop space, and prevent them from becoming irrelevant, and pushing Linux to systems rooms of cloud, so it becomes something like "The real world" in Matrix (the movie)?
I've understood the second E to mean "...with our proprietary stuff". Building OSS on top of other OSS is still just Embrace.
An example of Extend would be building features for WSL that only work in WSL, not Linux proper. So now people become dependent on the MS ecosystem, and lock-in begins; the lock-in is what enables the Extinguish phase.
Hard to say. I think to some extent there would have to be something to 'extinguish'.
At this point, 3d rendering is a bit of a crapshoot; Multi-platform vendors will likely have a pluggable rendering pipeline anyway (i.e. need to use DirectX for XBox, PS4/PS5 APIs, Metal for iOs, DirectX for Windows, maybe Vulkan if they developed on Linux or just want to make it easier to port later).
If I reach in my head, perhaps some form of 'DirectAI' API could limit competition in some markets or force vendor lock-in.
Otherwise, I think Microsoft is in a space where they seem to be pretty OK with; being the #2 in a lot of spaces is still profitable, with the benefit of less oversight regarding antitrust.
The other place I -might- forsee Microsoft doing 'lock-in' is around their developer tooling. By that I mean, they have a lot of cool tech that is a PITA to deploy at scale... unless you use Azure. SignalR scaleout would be a prime example that comes to mind.
I don't exactly see how WSL fits in any "extinguish" strategy. Maybe in regards to desktop Linux? I doubt Microsoft are aiming to extinguish desktop Linux considering its currently irrelevant market share and Windows no longer being Microsoft's bread winner. WSL seems to be more for the benefit of Azure, their real money maker, and backend developers.
I'd wager it started development as an internal tool considering how much of their workforce now works on Azure and the Windows team being absorbed into the Azure department.
I imagine WSL doesn't really affect most Linux desktop users and it really only impacts those that used full-blown VMs for dev work on Windows anyway.
I doubt many people are dual-booting on work computers and WSL really only benefits developers, which are most likely developing something on Linux (i.e. server linux) for work.
Again, Windows is no longer the bread winner of Microsoft and desktop Linux is comparatively irrelevant to Microsoft considering it represents like 1% of the market. Both ChromeOS and macOS are more direct competitors to Windows.
Why would they work to extinguish a non-competitor for a product that has taken a backseat from all of their other products? It just doesn't make sense.
> I doubt many people are dual-booting on work computers and WSL really only benefits developers, which are most likely developing something on Linux (i.e. server linux) for work.
I was dual booting Linux. I find WSL perfect for this because I can basically have different distributions with a lot of common tools stored in a windows folder. It’s perfect!
>Again, Windows is no longer the bread winner of Microsoft and desktop Linux is comparatively irrelevant to Microsoft considering it represents like 1% of the market.
If it's not their breadwinner then they should port over their office suite and the Windows API to Linux.
If it's not their breadwinner then they should port over their office suite and the Windows API to Linux.
How much do you think it would cost to port Office to Linux? How many extra Office licenses do you think they'd sell? Given your estimates of these two numbers, do you think Microsoft would turn a profit off of Office for Linux.
Anyway they've already 'ported' a decent subset of Office to Linux in form of Office365
This isn't helping your argument. Why would they do that? Again, Linux is comparatively irrelevant at 1% market share. It's not worth the cost, which is why most games don't have Linux ports.
I'd argue the opposite... Although I'm changing jobs in a few weeks, WSL2 has allowed for a push towards Linux/Docker usage and a significant uptake for new development. This is in a historically mostly Windows environment... if it weren't for WSL, it would still all be windows.
The shift in open development of .Net Core/5/6 has been nice too. I absolutely love the Remoting extensions/tooling for VS Code as well. I can edit/terminal on remote systems with ease. All of these things have made actually building/deploying to Linux servers a pleasure.
I jokingly say that Windows is one of the best Linux Desktop distros at this point, and there's some merit to that claim. I have the new terminal set to my WSL environment as default, spend most of my time in VS Code using WSL and Docker. Of course, I'm also switching my personal desktop back to (only) PopOS in a few weeks, also bought an M1 Macbook.
I'm not tethered to Windows in any meaningful way, but the water is pretty nice. It's crap like in TFA that causes me to not want to stay in the Windows pool.
