Bonum Certa Men Certa

'Embrace and Extend' at Microsoft: The New Generation

Man and woman



Summary: Some of the latest examples of Microsoft's predatory acts against Free software and against competition in general, disguised as acts of friendliness

Microsoft has got a well-established track record of suffocating competition by pretending to embrace it. It is not a theory but a simple fact, and many dead companies exist (or existed) to remind us of this.



In recent years FOSS has been a target of Microsoft's abusive EEE strategy (embrace, extend, extinguish) and today we present some new examples.

Microsoft Mono is a 'religious' (metaphorically speaking) software piece developed by both Microsoft and its partners; it helps openwash proprietary .NET and put Microsoft patent risk, dependence on Microsoft APIs etc. deep inside the competition. It is a Trojan horse. It is more like a virus. Well, it is now in repos of many distros or available from Microsoft partners. Jo Shields, who recently joined a Microsoft partner, boasts about this, as he has been doing for years (pushing Mono into Debian and Ubuntu for the most part). Can someone stop this? Microsoft veterans recently subsidised such efforts. This ought to be rather telling. Mono is about openwashing Microsoft lock-in which is already making its way into competing software from Sony. As one site put it: "The editor purports to be compatible with any game engine via its API suite, and offers a WYSIWYG interface and tools written in a mixture of C# and C++. It's designed to render in 3D using DirectX 11, and supports simultaneous use by multiple developers."

So, an attack on GNU, Linux, cross-platform languages and OpenGL is now being called "open".

"So, an attack on GNU, Linux, cross-platform languages and OpenGL is now being called "open"."Here is Microsoft hoping to embrace and extend Android, based on rumours. Fracturing the competition in an embrace-and-extend fashion would be a familiar strategy; remember the 'embrace' of SUSE. Embrace and extend can also be seen involving Ubuntu; tie-up with proprietary and spyware (Windows/Azure) can now be seen here. It's Ubuntu in bed with Microsoft again -- an embrace-and-extend with NSA's PRISM.

Watch how Microsoft does the same to Google right here. Bringing NSA to Ubuntu and standards? Google should sue Microsoft for extortion, not just for FUD. But it is not likely to happen because Google is not legally aggressive. Here is some of the latest FUD attack that reminds us how desperate (but malicious) Microsoft has become. To quote: "Microsoft is well known for spreading FUD to harm their competition. A business strategy that may work to some extent, but is also a sign that Microsoft lacks confidence in their own products.

"Microsoft recently published a Microsoft Educast on YouTube where they compared Chromebooks to Windows 8 laptops. The video has been set to private in the meantime, I suppose the feedback wasn't very positive.

"Unsurprisingly, Microsoft can't see many good things in Chromebooks, admitting they are super low-cost, but of course there are reasons for that. In the 9 minute video they manage to get several things wrong though. Maybe not as embarrassing as other MS FUD campaigns, but still worth a closer look."

So much for Microsoft 'embracing' FOSS...

Earlier this week we wrote about the Microsoft-connected Black Duck with its latest FUD against FOSS. Well, the Wall Street Journal covered the subsidy and another article called this Microsoft partner "open source software provider". Well, Black Duck is not an "OSS provider", it's a proprietary software company exploiting FOSS and disseminating FUD about it. See how FOSS gets diluted and distorted? Maybe this was the intention all along. This openwashing can be traced back to the deceiving, dishonest press release. Black Duck spent a lot of money planting the press release all over the Web [1, 2], falsely claiming that Black Duck "Advance Leadership In Open Source Software Logistics" (they advance leadership in Open Source Software FUD, that's what they do). It is true that Black Duck has leadership in this area because other Microsoft-connected firms of its kind, such as OpenLogic, are not as big. Here is a new example of a journalist promoting the FOSS-hostile FUD from Protecode with a slideshow in a news site called "CIO Insight" (fear for CIOs). Protecode, unlike many in its area, does not seem to be Microsoft-connected, but its strategy is more or less the same. It only speaks about problems in FOSS, or perceived problems in FOSS, in order to sell proprietary software and services.

Microsoft's tentacles reach further than a lot of people care to notice. Here we have AMD embraced and extended by Microsoft:

AMD and Microsoft jointly released C++ AMP version 1.2 compiler that supports Linux alongside Windows. Ubuntu is the officially supported distribution at this time.


Watch how Intel now ignores Linux, having been infiltrated and blackmailed by Microsoft [1, 2, 3, 4].

Not just Microsoft is doing an EEE manoeuvre. Former Microsoft executives who now run VMware are also doing it. The following new article is titled "Is VMware OpenStack an embrace of open source — or an attempt to extinguish it?"

We wrote about this embrace and extend move last month and suspicion is now becoming the norm.

Another Microsoft partner, Centrify (spreading Microsoft AD), is now becoming more proprietary and expensive. This should serve to show why Microsoft APIs are harmful for one to depend on, irrespective of the platform.

These are all examples from the past week alone. They ought to show the impact of Microsoft entryism and involvement by proxy. Something that is a lot less problematic -- generally speaking -- is FOSS adapting to Windows [1], but whenever Microsoft tries to infiltrate FOSS it is very unlikely to be because Microsoft wants to help. Base it on Microsoft's bad track record. The company is very much determined to destroy FOSS unless it helps sell proprietary software from Microsoft.

Related/contextual items from the news:


  1. Univa Grid Engine Does Windows, Linux Containers
    Grid Engine, the popular workload management tool for distributed computing environments, now does Windows. And it is also doing Linux control groups, or cgroups, containers, a technology that was championed by Google many years back as the basis for its internal resource control on its massive clusters.




Recent Techrights' Posts

Jamie Zawinski Complained About Wayland, Then Decided to Give It a Go, Now Complains Again About Wayland
Ask IBM (Red Hat) why it's worth throwing so much away just for Wayland fanaticism
Russia Set to Ban Facebook?
If WhatsApp is made to "leave", that means Facebook or "Meta".
Taking Stock of a Good and Productive Week
We shall now be taking a break, unpacking the new hard drive (8 TB), and making backups of everything
Ageism in Tech
Your protocol is "old"...
 
Links 20/07/2025: Fending Off BRICS and US Government Attacks Its Own Media (Like China and Russia)
Links for the day
Framed by social control media: Alex Belfield, Voice of Reason
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Gemini Links 20/07/2025: Summertime and OCC25 Wrap-up
Links for the day
Slopwatch: Planet Ubuntu, LinuxSecurity, and More
former "Linux" blogs which basically became slopfarms
Links 20/07/2025: More GAFAM Lawsuits, Layoffs, and SLAPPs
Links for the day
Nice Recovery (From Actual Fire) by PCLinuxOS, New Version of PCLinuxOS Released, Now Top of DistoWatch
PCLinuxOS is a community-driven distro
More Microsoft Shutdowns That Mostly Slipped Under the Radar
Remember what happened to books 'sold' by Microsoft?
Microsoft Lunduke Still Fighting Cancel Culture With... Cancel Culture
There will be no "winners" in such 'debates'
The History of Daily Links and Politics
"I support Wayland, but I also support abortion..."
Microsoft is at 0% "Market Share" in Most Areas
Depending on the taxonomy chosen, there may be dozens of categories other than desktops and laptops
"The moment MSFT stock fails to start tumbling, that’s the beginning of another corporate giant going under."
There are far more layoffs at Microsoft than at Intel, but you would not get this impression based on Wall Street media
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, July 19, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, July 19, 2025
Gemini Links 19/07/2025: Git For Authors and Filtered Antenna
Links for the day
UEFI 'Secure' Boot Abuses by Microsoft to be Brought Up in the UK High Court in 3 Months
we'll seek compensation
Next Year It'll Be Half a Decade Since the Fall of Freenode (and IRC is Still Doing OK)
Our IRC network is still accessible using the exact same software that ran in Windows 3.x
Lupa Will Soon Know of 3,100+ Active Gemini Capsules
And some people in the "Small Web" try to tell us that Gemini is dying?
The Slopfarms Are Taking Real News Articles and Replacing Them With Lies Generated by Machines
Bluntly speaking, Fagioli is nothing short of an online scammer
Links 19/07/2025: Techtarget to Cull 10% of Staff, New Threats to Free Press in the US (Home of Dangerous and Violent Stranglers From Microsoft)
Links for the day
Gemini Links 19/07/2025: "Climate Justice” and Forking Programs
Links for the day
What Wayland and Microsoft/IBM systemd Have in Common
focus on what IBM (Red Hat) is pushing while running over critics.
Linux Already Has About 60% of the "Market"
"When mentioning the client side," opines an associate, "it is essential to recite the list of other markets where Microsoft is negligible or a no-show. It is repetitive to do so, but it needs saying -- often."
In Norway, Android/Linux Has Just Hit All-Time High (First Time Since 2020), GNU/Linux Already Very Prevalent
Despite its small population size, Norway gave us Qt and many other things
Finland (and NATO) Must Move to GNU/Linux and Dump Microsoft Even Faster
"Microsoft is not a technology problem, it is a staffing problem."
Microsoft's Mass Layoffs Very Wide-Ranging, Media Focused on Gaming Though Microsoft Mass-Firing Lawyers and "AI" Staff (Contradicting Its Supposed "Investment" in "AI")
Microsoft plans to fire almost half a thousand people in legal roles
2012 Article About the Free Software Foundation Blasting Canonical/Ubuntu Over Adoption of "Secure" Boot (Microsoft's Remote Control Over GNU/Linux Since PCs' Power-on)
By Katherine Noyes (article has since then became 404, not found)
The Microsofters We Sued Helped Microsoft Make GNU/Linux 'Expire' This Year
"Linux and Secure Boot certificate expiration"
linuxconfig.org Joins linuxtechlab.com and Others, Becomes a Slopfarm With Fake Linux 'Articles' (LLM Slop)
They contain "linux" in their domain names, but they are just slopfarms
Links 19/07/2025: Microsoft Cuts in China and Wall Street Journal Sued for Reporting on Jeffrey Epstein
Links for the day
Debian Can Dump Blind Users Because I am Not Blind
the sort of mentality we're up against
Fascistic Policies Got 'Normalised' in 'Public Office'. Let's Not Let the Same Happen in 'Tech'.
Political discourse typically guides what's "normal" and what "good citizens" should believe/feel
The European Patent Office Cannot Attract Proficient Patent Examiners Who Master Their Domain
They are enablers and facilitators of corruption
Yes, Your Mastodon Instance Will Also Shut Down
Few people run a one-person instance in the Fediverse
The Demise of GAFAM Necessitates Greater and Broader Awareness
Morale at Microsoft is really bad
Free Software Foundation Reaches 75% of Funding Goal
Not bad for this "Fosschild"
Slopwatch: 7 New Examples of Fake 'Linux' Slop Pieces (Plagiarism With Misinformation)
Serial Sloppers need to be shunned
Links 19/07/2025: Kapo-berg Settles, Software Patents Challenged
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, July 18, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, July 18, 2025
Links 18/07/2025: Peace With PKK and Connie Francis Dies
Links for the day
Gemini Links 18/07/2025: Alhena 5.1.8 and Bornhack 2025
Links for the day
How to Top Up a "Limited Liability" With Even More Limitations (Dodging Accountability in the UK)
Some people call it a "shell game". Sometimes it's done for tax evasion purposes.
Free Software Foundation, Inc. (FSF) Inches Towards 75% of Fund-Raising Target
Will the cutoff date be extended again?
Gemini Space (or Geminispace) Grows, But Usage of Certificate Authority Let's Encrypt Drops Further
Ideally, all Gemini capsules should use self-signed certificates
Links 18/07/2025: More Microsoft Layoffs in Activision, The New Stack (Sponsored by Microsoft) Complains About Openwashing
Links for the day
Gemini Links 18/07/2025: OCC25 Gnus for Reading Usenet and RSS Feeds, Small Web Updates
Links for the day
[Meme] 9AM Meeting at Brett Wilson LLP
Brett Wilson LLP in space
Listing as Staff People Who Left the Company More Than Six Years Earlier
There are apparently no laws against that
Brian Fagioli Shovels Up LLM Slop (Plagiarism) Onto Slashdot, Then Uses Slashdot for Affirmation or as Badge of Honour
Notice how some of his latest slop is presented ("as featured on Slashdot")
Social Control Media Productivity
Snapping photos of the bone
The Law Firm SLAPPing Us For the Microsofters Lost 72% of Its Tangible Assets in the Past Year, According to Its Own Reports
That might help explain why they're willing to tolerate serial stranglers from Microsoft as clients
Slopwatch: LinuxSecurity.com Slopfarm and Slopfarms Propped Up by Google News
"As LLM slop is foisted onto the WWW in place of knowledge and real content, it now gets ingested and processed by other LLMs, creating a sort of ouroboros of crap."
Links 18/07/2025: Weather Events and Health Hazards
Links for the day
Microsoft's All-Time Low in Finland
Microsoft is in a freefall
Security: Shane Wegner & Debian statement of incompetence
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, July 17, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, July 17, 2025