If no explanation is provided, then that means that the explanation is being concealed (arousing suspicions)

Summary: DeX was primarily a threat to the desktop/laptop monopoly of Microsoft, so its sudden abandonment -- without even an explanation -- continues to attract speculations

"I think there is more to this Samsung story than just DeX," David (GNU developer) wrote in IRC half a day ago. "Earlier this year they terminated their "director of open source technologies", his staff, and seemed to have pulled out of a lot of projects. They also abandoned their office phone system business. I had also learned from him before that happened that Samsung smart tv's use a version of Enlightenment, but what they are doing and why I do not know. It does seem part of a larger pattern there though."

We've received a lot more feedback on yesterday's article. Nobody seems to know for sure what happened. We can speculate. We think we may need Samsung whistle-blowers to tell us whether some 'Korean Elop' has entered Samsung. Never forget what Elop did to Nokia over in Finland (at the behest of Microsoft), turning it from a top Linux contributor to an anti-Linux patent trolls feeder (while canning all the FOSS projects) and conditioning it into Windows suicide mode. Finland knows such tactics of infiltration and these greatly harm the nation. If Microsoft arranged for some staff changes, then we need proof (which we lack at this stage).

“They also abandoned their office phone system business. I had also learned from him [Samsung's director of open source technologies] before that happened that Samsung smart tv's use a version of Enlightenment, but what they are doing and why I do not know. It does seem part of a larger pattern there though.”
      --DavidDavid reminded us that Samsung terminated their "director of open source technologies" (we mentioned that at the time). Does anybody know whether Samsung changed some director-level or executive-level people? The suspicion is that someone up at the top pulls strings to hamstring Linux and promote Microsoft instead. Patent lawsuits and threats have already contributed towards that. "The death-cut is only a phone call away," as Tom put it. He too is in IRC. There are alternative explanations^*, however, so we need to get to the bottom of it.

12 years ago we called for a boycott of Samsung after it had signed a patent deal with Microsoft, in effect agreeing to pay Microsoft patent royalties for "Linux". Yes, excuse our cynicism about "Microsoft loves Linux" (cash). Remember that as recently as this year Microsoft launched yet more lawsuits to that effect, so we know nothing has truly changed. ⬆ _____ ^* There's this alternative explanation entertained in IRC:

[13:36] oiaohm dyfet: you also have to wonder if the remove of Linux desktop from dex is linked the the fact there will be pinephone and libre 5 phone in the market. [13:36] oiaohm Removing direct benchmarking. [13:41] MinceR would be a stupid move if it was [13:41] MinceR considering that they would make their own products even less desirable to avoid comparison with products that probably have much weaker hardware [13:45] dyfet An interesting point @oiaohm [13:46] dyfet And of course there is Duval's "/e/"... [13:48] dyfet I think it is part of something larger though, given the other things Samsung had been doing [13:59] oiaohm MinceR: Not exactly. There are a lot of different limitations around the way Dex contains Linux distributions. The horrible part is there is a real possiblity that a pinephone could run Linux native applications faster than dex can the fun of emulation overheads. [13:59] oiaohm MinceR: much weaker hardware kicking your ass basically would look really bad. [14:01] oiaohm Having digital rights management certification I would guess would also get in way. [14:02] MinceR then maybe they could get rid of it [14:02] MinceR all it does is lessen the value of their product