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The strategy fits perfectly: Embrace Ubuntu into Windows, let the dev community grow. Then add windows-specific hooks and additions for open-source software to build against. At last destroy the backward compatibility to end linux. This is what they have always done, why should this time be different.


I really don't see how that strategy would work with open source projects. Wouldn't most contributions for the "extend" phase be open source?

Once open source, it's much harder to extinguish.


It would probably be some proprietary extensions in something like systemD. Increase the complexity to code about 10x to eliminate the small devs, etc. Nothing we haven't seen with the open doc standard, ActiveX, Java portability, etc.

You have to think more business like. Why extinguish Linux when every copy running somewhere can give you licencing income. Maybe they'll partner with redhat and provide them something that has to be paid. Unlimited possibilities really.


Open source means nothing and is same easy to extinguish, it's only more visible when someone is trying to. Microsoft, Google, Apple do open source work for publicity, if you as a single developer want a change in a projects, you submit PR... and wait weeks. First you need to write RFC, at some point RFC will be discussed behind closed doors by corporatisation members, you can have your vote in it on GitHub, but nothing else as we saw once already with MS. All you can do is fix documentation and tests for them, means they get free labour to improve their products, you can have an important repo forked on GitHub.


So have you ever contributed to OSS projects by these companies? I ask because what you've described is definitely not the case from what I can see.


Nope. In fact, that term is almost always applied to open technology. Right now Red Hat is doing it to Linux and Google is doing it to the Web. See the list of examples on the linked article for more.


Mostly just ignore the parent comment, some people are inherently compelled to link a twenty year old business strategy on EVERY Microsoft-related thread.


I can see you aren't reading the current changes in ms db licencing costs, not moving a finger about Kronos to favour directx and the likes. What do you think changed in ms after 20 years? Them providing a cute text editor for Linux and now they are the good guys?


I don't think this strategy would work anymore on these fields. Microsoft does not have dominant market share in cloud, server operating systems, development platforms or databases and it does not look like they could gain it. The dominating position is key for the embrace, extended, extinguish because that's the way to push your own stuff to market.

I believe Microsoft is doing these moves, because they have decided that the old business model where all products are required to support the sales of each other is too risky. It served them well, but now there are too many good alternatives on many areas. If Azure does not support Linux, customers are not going to migrate to Windows because of that, they just pick another cloud. The old way was risky, because it meant that if customers moved away from Windows, they also had to move away from .NET and SQL Server.


Extend/extinguish everything that isn't GPLv3, replace whatever is.


I'd like to remind you that there's openage, a free engine for Age of Empires 2.

https://github.com/SFTtech/openage

It will be the future if you wanna accomplish things the original engine is incapable of doing, especially a sane mod API.

Help us make it more awesome :)


Thanks for sharing! I actually thought this was going to point to 0ad [1]...which because it deals with ancient warfare, I had just assumed it was sparked by AOE2 community. Good to know of openage.

Out of curiosity...how much do you still play AOE2? I guess that would implicitly indicate how far along openage is...but I was also interested just how much someone has to love a game to rebuild it from scratch :)

[1]https://github.com/0ad/0ad


I'm not playing it much, i'm actually pretty bad at it, but it's totally fun. We mainly play aoc in wine, which works very well on local LANs but is crappy via internet, same without wine, which was the initial spark.

Nobody had suceeded in creating a clone with potential at 2013, so we took chances and are still trying to do it the "right" way.

I think the last year I played about 40h of aoc, so actually not that much, and haven't played aoe:hd yet.


Does anyone have an OS X build of this?



Is openage ready enough to allow you to actually play games?


This is a free python gtk3 speed reading tool:

https://github.com/SFTtech/splash

It needs a lot of polishing but may be a good start for you.


You might be interested in the free Age of Empires II engine then:

http://github.com/SFTtech/openage


Think of the awesome applications:

* GNU Radio

* Pulseaudio mixing

* Desktop environment configs

* (your program here)


Terrain blending theory: https://github.com/SFTtech/openage/blob/b7af79f1d5bfcc986935...

Terrain blending implementation: https://github.com/SFTtech/openage/blob/b7af79f1d5bfcc986935...

I think we got the perfectly matching algorithm, we even get the same blending bugs with snow :D


Cool! How do you draw heights? I always wondered whether the ground texture was really texture-mapped, or whether it was just drawn flat and then shades were drawn over it.


A bitcoin address appeared on satoshi's profile page:

https://blockchain.info/address/19pta6x1hXzV9F5hHnhMARYbRjux...

http://p2pfoundation.ning.com/profile/SatoshiNakamoto

Satoshi Nakamoto posted a status:

"Tip Jar: 19pta6x1hXzV9F5hHnhMARYbRjuxF6xbbV"


This will not work as described. I think his design is a good idea, but still does not work.

I build a better harddrive (with 4 kb storage!) over a year ago, imgur link will follow.

Now to the design problem in this HDD: see that all the blocks are blue in the platter? No way to swap each of the bits without magically creating new green blocks. My hdd solves that problem by having BOTH block types available on the platter. But see for yourself:

http://imgur.com/a/8ESMW


How confident are you?

I know very little about Minecraft, but if this doesn't work, it pretty much has to be trolling. (No way you build something like this and not notice that it doesn't work.) And then I wouldn't expect them to offer a link to download the map, and I wouldn't expect someone else to say they've got it working: http://www.reddit.com/r/Minecraft/comments/2e0ghk/fully_func...


ok, it does work. i totally forgot about the command blocks. he's using them to change the block type.


Imagine a write process: You'd need to somehow replace the visible blue blocks with a green block. But where does the green block come from?


I don't know much about MC or computers, but as far as I understand each bit has both blocks, shift up for blue=0, shift down for green=1. Here: http://i.imgur.com/rqZm4DU.gif


Yes, but you don't see BOTH block types on the big tape. Swapping bits requires one block for each state, but the green ones are missing from the tape screenshots.


I don't think that they have to necessarily be green. So the fact that you don't see them may not mean that they are not there. He may be using blocks the same color as the structure for aesthetic purposes.



What won't work?


but it's non-free software.

you should also consider trying emacs.


lol the first thing i thought this article is about was the wine software from winehq.org :)


my first thought was 'hey, wine has come a long way since the early days'. this is hackernews, not vinternews.


moi aussi!


like wise!


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