https://lunduke.substack.com/p/microsoft-begins-extinguish-p...
> On June 16th, Microsoft updated the policy for the Microsoft store to include the following restriction for all software sold: “to prohibit charging fees in the Store for open-source or other software that is generally available for free”
The obvious non-evil interpretation is that this policy is intended to stop scalpers who eg sell Mozilla Firefox on Windows Store.
See also this tweet: https://twitter.com/gisardo/status/1545473811226705922
> On June 16, we shared a policy aimed to protect customers from misleading listings,in effect from July 16. In listening to dev community,we got feedback it could be perceived differently than intended.We'll delay enforcement of that policy until we clarify the intent. Stay tuned.
Of course the GM posting this could be lying and the intent could be to specifically harm open-source, but... that doesn't seem likely given the evidence we have?
As evidence that Microsoft is doing "Extinguish", this is very thin.
They _have_ released special versions of VS Code's C++, C#, and Python tools that only work with Microsoft-sanctioned binaries. [1][2]
They also ripped out a .NET feature at the last minute because they wanted to keep it exclusive to Visual Studio. [3]
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/k0s8qw/vs_code_devel...
[2] https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium/blob/master/DOCS.md#pro...
[3] https://www.theverge.com/2021/10/22/22740701/microsoft-dotne...
https://www.tomshardware.com/news/microsoft-released-cbl-mar...
> Just the same, over the last few years, Microsoft has invested heavily in obtaining control over key portions of the Linux (and, to some degree, open source) ecosystem.
This seems incredibly disingenuous.
The article is implying there's a smooth continuity between these two sentences, and basically pretending Satya Nadella doesn't exist.
This is like saying "For years, Microsoft has completely ignored accessibility in video games. And now they're investing in the adaptive controller and forcing developers to implement accessibility features? Why? Why are trying to control accessibility?" without mentioning Phil Spencer.
> Well. If we’re simply being practical and objective… Microsoft seems to have achieved the “Embrace” and “Extend” portion of the old “Embrace. Extend. Extinguish.” business plan.
How? How have they done that? Leaving aside that Microsoft hasn't done EEE in a while, the article doesn't mention anything that could count as the "Extend" part of EEE. They haven't released an extended version of Linux with Microsoft-exclusive features, they haven't created special Github plans that only work if you're using Microsoft Office, they haven't released a special version of Git that only works with Visual Studio or VsCode, etc.
There's reasonable distrust, which Microsoft certainly has earned, and then there's paranoia.