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Ubuntu on Windows

(blog.dustinkirkland.com)
2049 points bpierre | 1 comments | 30 Mar 16 16:35 UTC | HN request time: 0.208s | source
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takeda ◴[30 Mar 16 19:39 UTC] No.11392296[source]▶
Surprised I don't see anyone else mentioning this.

This looks to me like typical Microsoft strategy that they utilized a lot 25 years ago.

1. when not leader in given market, make your product fully compatible with competitor

2. start gaining momentum (e.g. why should I use Linux, when on Windows I can run both Linux and Windows applications)

3. once becoming leader break up compatibility

4. rinse and repeat

Happened with MS-DOS, Word, Excel, Internet Explorer, and others.

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derek_kanjus ◴[30 Mar 16 22:30 UTC] No.11393546[source]▶
What bothers me about people bringing Embrace, Extend, Extinguish is how they never mention how all the big software companies do this. For example, how many nice JavaScript features are in Google Chrome that aren't anywhere close to real standards? But when anyone but Microsoft does it they're just pushing the industry forward, not out to stab you in the back.

Let's not call it Embrace, Extend, Extinguish until we see the Extend & Extinguish. Microsoft is a very different company than it used to be.

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1. Saltor ◴[31 Mar 16 03:52 UTC] No.11394864[source]▶
I'm hopeful that this will lead towards greater unification and innovation, but I can see why people are more likely to bring up "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish" when Microsoft does something compared to when other companies do. The difference is that Microsoft is the one who internally coined the term and used it to describe their strategies. It was a conscious and explicitly stated strategy rather than an unspoken side benefit.

You could certainly say that none of that matters and what we should care about is the actual actions that each company makes, but I can definitely see how people would read more intent into things like this when Microsoft does it compared to other companies.