Bonum Certa Men Certa

Microsoft's War on Java Shows That Microsoft's E.E.E. (Embrace, Extend, Extinguish) Tactics Are Alive and Well

Microsoft a serial killer of FOSS

A serial killer



Summary: Microsoft has just killed yet another FOSS project (using money to shut down competitors) -- one that was helping Android and Java

THE headline "Embrace, extend – and kill. Microsoft discontinues RoboVM" says it all really. Several people in our IRC channels noticed this original story (from the original statement) rather quickly and later on in the day some people told me about it privately, so it obviously wasn't overlooked at all.



"Nice," Lirodon wrote in the afternoon, "and now Microsoft has killed RoboVM dead. It was already dead when they became non-free."

"Microsoft," MinceR responded, "where projects go to die [...] just like they killed entire video game developer companies (Terminal Reality and Ensemble Studios)" (we covered this years ago).

Microsoft is just the same old evil company, there is no ' new' Microsoft. Microsoft will try this against GNU/Linux if it can. It's its classic modus operandi, but taking on a project as big as these (to "extinguish") is a monumental task.

What Techrights wrote about RoboVM when it was first "embraced" [1, 2, 3] turns out to be true. We foresaw exactly what Microsoft would do about RoboVM once it's payday (yet again!) for Miguel de Icaza.

Some people still wonder, what exactly happened to RoboVM? Here it is in their own words: "Over the past few weeks, we’ve been working with the teams at Xamarin and Microsoft to assess the technology and business conditions of RoboVM to determine the path forward for the products. After looking at the complete landscape for mobile development with Java, the decision has been made to wind down development of RoboVM."

After they had made it proprietary (shortly before Xamarin stepped in formally), essentially stabbing the whole community in the back, the Microsoft people (all of them are Microsoft staff now) did this:



For any fools out there who still think Microsoft doesn’t do E.E.E. against FOSS, here we go again. What would it take to wake people up? How many more companies need to die? How could RoboVM not know that Xamarin was an evil proxy of Microsoft? It was common knowledge as it wasn't hard to see where Xamarin's money had come from (Microsoft veterans).

Microsoft is now essentially shutting down another pillar of Java, so this is classic E.E.E. via Xamarin. As one person put it to us, "and today Microsoft ordered RoboVM to wind down operation" (linking to the original announcement).

A lot of the utter rubbish about Microsoft "loving Linux" is a villainous lie. It's the best lie money can buy as it's clear that Microsoft is still very aggressive; it hates GNU/Linux, it hates Android, and it hates Java. Don't let the Microsoft-funded media fool you (Microsoft Peter, for instance, moved from the UK to the US to write for Condé Nast, which is paid by Microsoft). Microsoft basically buys articles from various large media networks; it pays networks to tell us that Microsoft has changed, but nothing is changing, it's only escalating.

The above, says Fernando Cassia, "reminds me of VirtualPC, which was a product of Innotek Gmbh and offerend Windows virtualization under OS/2 hosts...."

He then told me, "guess which product they dropped after being acquired by Microsoft? Yes, Virtual PC for IBM OS/2 :-/"

He further emphasised that "everything Microsoft does is about leveraging its cash cow to hurt competitors or whatever it sees as a menace" and "the war on Java started ten years ago... "Operation Sunblock" never really stopped" (here is the article about "Operation Sunblock")

"20 years ago," he added a few hours later, "boy how time flew [...] "+options available...including tools that will help you PORT TO XAMARIN" //Competitor eliminated.Mission accomplished"

When will be the next antitrust probe against Microsoft bribery, racketeering, blackmail, and extortion? Did it get enough lobbyists in all the right places in order to shift any such focus to Google? Remember that Microsoft is still run by the same thugs (only the CEO changed) and they want Android and Linux to be next in the E.E.E. pipeline. Microsoft loves nothing but itself and its own monopoly of lock-in and back doors. New charm offensives try to lull us into sleep and inaction (no defensive/reactionary statements from the community).

As one person told me yesterday: "Remember Microsoft's charm offensive with Nokia? We all know very well how that ended and what happened to MeeGo & Meltemi."

We wrote a lot about what Microsoft did to Nokia. How many more Linux and FOSS backers need to die (out of work) before the media acknowledges that Microsoft is a liar and an assassin?

Recent Techrights' Posts

European Parliament and Council Directive on Privacy is Vanishing
"edited / censored some time more recently"
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, October 28, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, October 28, 2025
Slopwatch: The March of Slopfarms, From UbuntuPIT to Linux Journal and to Various Fake Sites Still Promoted by Google News
It's so worrying to see what the Web has become
Links 29/10/2025: CISA, Ukraine, and Amazon Problems
Links for the day
[Teaser] The EPO's Spokesperson, a Cocaine User, Fancies Young Women
How's that for "optics" in the EU and Europe's second-largest institution?
How Will António Campinos Respond to the EPO's 'Cocainegate'?
That's the same thing we saw and still see when the press deals with enablers and partners of Jeffrey Epstein
Join Us Now and Share the News - Part IV: There Cannot be Free Software Without Free Press and Free Information
One day, one can hope, more people will recognise that for Software Freedom we need free press and free thinkers
Join Us Now and Share the News - Part III: Principled Stance Is Never Cheap
Protecting the truth and insisting that the general public is made aware of things that really happened isn't cheap
Join Us Now and Share the News - Part II: Because Scarcity of Accurate Information Breeds Collective Ignorance
we too will strive to share information that's aggressively suppressed
Gemini Links 28/10/2025: More New Arrivals at Geminispace, xkcd on "Document Forgery"
Links for the day
Join Us Now and Share the News - Part I: Defence of the Truth
This year we make a very strong, firm statement for truth, even if that means explaining our work to the top media judge in the country
Links 28/10/2025: Meta and Fentanylware (CheeTok) Age-Restricted Down Under, "Britain Needs China’s Money"
Links for the day
Links 28/10/2025: Mass Layoffs at Amazon and Charter to Cut 1,200 Jobs
Links for the day
The Cocaine Patent Office - Part II: The Person Who Planted Paid-for Fake News for the European Patent Office (EPO) is a Cocaine User, Friend of António Campinos, Now on Record as Having Been Arrested
Background: High-level manager at the European Patent Office caught in public with cocaine, arrested
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, October 27, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, October 27, 2025
Google News Drowning in Slop (and Slopfarms That Hijack About Half the Results)
Google News seems to be drowning in this stuff
Gemini Links 28/10/2025: "How to Maximize Your Positive Impact" and ASCII Art and Artist Attribution
Links for the day
PETA and Activism
Being staff or volunteer in PETA isn't easy
Big Blue, Huge Debt
debt will soar again
Links 27/10/2025: Mass Surveillance Sold as "AI", People Reluctant to Lose Physical Media
Links for the day
Parties and Milestones Again
we've begun putting up about 40 balloons
Techrights' 19th Anniversary: Bronze
Time to go back to preparing for this anniversary
Our Latest European Patent Office (EPO) Series Will Last Several Weeks, Will Ask the EPO Management and the European Union (EU) Very Difficult Questions
If nobody loses a job (or jobs) over this, then the EU basically became no better than Colombia or Nicaragua
Slopwatch: LinuxSecurity, UbuntuPIT, Brian Fagioli, and Google News
We focus on stories that are fake or LLM slop that disguises itself as "news" about Linux
Links 27/10/2025: Wikipedia Vandalism, Bruce Perens Opens up on Childhood
Links for the day
This Site Could Not be Done by LLMs Even If It Wanted to (Because It's Not a Parrot of What Other Sites Say)
LLMs have no knowledge or deep understanding
Microsoft is Disloyal Towards Its Most Loyal Employees
Against its most faithful enablers
19 Years, No Censorship
No factual information is ever going to be removed, more so if it is in the public interest
We Are Not a Conventional Site, That's Why They Hate (or Love) Us
Throughout the week this week we'll be focusing on the EPO
Following the Line of Cocaine All the Way to the Top
Even a million denials and spin-doctoring won't distract from the core issue
The Cocaine Patent Office - Part I: António Campinos Brought Corruption and Nepotism to the EPO, Then Came the Cocaine
High-level manager at the European Patent Office (EPO) caught in public with cocaine, the Office has some answering to do
Purchasing/Possessing Computers Isn't the Same as Controlling Computers
Let's strive to put computers back under the control of their users, no matter who purchased these (usually the users)
Gemini Links 27/10/2025: Alhena 5.4.3 and Fixing Bash
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, October 26, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, October 26, 2025
Thankfully We've Made Copies of More Interesting Data From statCounter
If statCounter (the Web site or the 'webapp') vanished overnight, we'd still have something left of it
More Silent Layoffs at IBM/Red Hat
when the media counts such layoffs or presents tallies the numbers are very incomplete