A new kind of Trojan horse

Summary: Embrace, extend, extinguish (E.E.E.) tactics are still being used in an effort to put Microsoft's proprietary code (with back doors) and proprietary formats (Microsoft lock-in) inside the competition

ONE year ago we wrote about Microsoft's Revolution Analytics acquisition. Microsoft is buying out parts of academia (recall Moodle), bringing them into the proprietary fold. R will be dead soon. It won't be what it used to be; not anymore. Embrace, extend, extinguish (E.E.E.) works like this, so later on they'll remove the non-Microsoft bits, including standard/platform-neutral formats.

A lot of Microsoft-friendly networks wrote about the latest E.E.E. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8]. What good is "free and open" (to quote IDG) when it's run on proprietary stacks with back doors? E.E.E. in the making is what this really is (now at phase one, the "embrace"). Just look who's writing about it [1, 2, 3, 4]. A lot of Microsoft fans. The Microsoft booster Tim Anderson tried adding a Linux angle to it:

Microsoft has released R Server – for statistical analysis using the R language – based on software from Revolution Analytics, a company acquired by the tech giant in April 2015.

What's used is a distribution of R now called "Microsoft R Open", which is available for Windows, SUSE Linux, and Red Hat Linux.

What used to be a FOSS and GNU/Linux thing has been effectively hijacked by Microsoft. Which of the above do people think Microsoft will recommend? Microsoft keeps pushing its proprietary software into GNU/Linux not because it helps other platforms but because it is trying to dominate these platforms, potentially derailing them at will. An article from Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols says "​Microsoft open sources Edge web browser's JavaScript engine, plans port to Linux", but does GNU/Linux even need that? This is an effort to extinguish other JavaScript engines that are FOSS and not controlled by Microsoft. We wrote about this move before and deemed/considered it openwashing because the whole remains proprietary. Microsoft is just messing with perceptions. This same move was hailed by Microsoft Emil, Microsoft-friendly sites, and Microsoft advocacy sites.

"Microsoft is just messing with perceptions."Make no mistakes about it. Microsoft isn't playing nice here and the code isn't safe to use. Yet another serious hole has just been found [1] in Vista 10, which is being promoted as 'open' using Chakra (not the GNU/Linux distribution, Microsoft is just hijacking names of other FOSS projects again, just like with VistA or OpenOffice). Microsoft Emil [2] and others now try to pressure people to adopt the NSA’s favourite operating system (Vista 10) using ‘security’ alarmism, as Microsoft is abandoning its own browsers except the latest and most privacy-hostile one (proprietary with openwashing by means of 'Chakra'). ⬆

Related/contextual items from the news:

1. Windows 10 shattered Remote Desktop's security defaults – so get patching

   Microsoft reckons no one is actively exploiting the security vulnerabilities addressed in this month's patch bundle, but it's only a matter of time before criminals reverse-engineer the updates and target them.

2. Microsoft ends support for IE8, IE9, IE10, and Windows 8

   Microsoft today ended support for old versions of Internet Explorer, including IE8, IE9, and IE10, as well as Windows 8. For the browsers, the company has also released a final patch (KB3123303) that includes the latest cumulative security updates and an “End of Life” upgrade notification.