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Comment by pritambaral | Hacker News Reader

Whenever EEE has been brought up in the context of Microsoft, it has been used to describe a predatory behaviour. Indeed, the "Extinguish" part is facilitated by the "Extend" portion being a proprietary lock-in.

Using Linux (the kernel) to pull off such proprietary lock-in is going to be difficult because of the kernel's GPLv2 license (although, Tivoization is still an available tactic).

Using the Linux desktop (which is what you seem to be talking about), on the other hand, to pull of such proprietary lock-in is going to compete directly with Windows's desktop market share; which is why I think Microsoft will never push the Linux desktop in an Embrace-Extend attempt.

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"Tivoization" is the entire value-add here. IoT devices will run SOME linux. But they want an easy to use, secure Linux. Microsoft's model here is to tack on those bits and charge. It's not some secret ploy, it's in the article.

As for desktop linux: microsoft has four versions of linux userland in its app store for desktop, published by Microsoft. Windows provides drivers and boot - that's its value-add.

> "Tivoization" is the entire value-add here.

In the context of the GPL, "Tivoization" refers specifically to the practice of blocking modifications to the running software without breaking the copyleft requirements of GPLv2 (and similar) licenses. Sure, Microsoft could that here, but hasn't so far. And while I'm not inclined to believe they'll do the right thing, I don't see or suspect them doing the wrong thing yet.

> Microsoft's model here is to tack on those bits and charge. It's not some secret ploy, it's in the article.

I did not allege any secret ploy. And from what I read, there's no mention of any charges (yet).

> published by Microsoft

Which distros exactly? As I recalled (and just verified), Ubuntu, OpenSuSE, and Debian are published by Canonical, SuSE, and Debian, respectively.

> Windows provides drivers and boot

Not adequately enough, one could argue. No graphics, no raw devices, last I checked.

It would be the Android-style Tivoization, where you get the OS on the device you buy, and if you are lucky the vendor publishes their kernel on an obscure part of the website, but without certain binary drivers. You may find you can't actually do anything useful with the sources because of those missing drivers and because the bootloader is locked to only accept new software signed by the vendor.

As I understand what Microsoft provides is only CLI tools so that you can compile your favourite Node.JS extension. Not more than that. No GUI.

You can run an x client just fine, with any Windows x server running on the host, just as you would with x forwarding. It's not perfect but it does work.

For the sake of discussion, let's assume that the 'extinguish' step can be generalized to include something other than the proprietary lock-in.

> something other than the proprietary lock-in.

Something like ... freedom lock-in? I'm not sure I see how EEE can be without some form of lock-in. A trap is necessarily required for the "Extinguish" step to work.

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