Some people accuse me of putting "embrace, extend, and extinguish" (#EEE) to a standard that is unfalsifiable.
First off, it doesn't matter whether or not EEE is unfalsifiable -- this was still a monopolistic strategy that Microsoft tried to employ to kill competition.
But as it happens, EEE actually did work on a few occasions. Most prominently with OS/2 Warp.
What many people don't realize is that IBM didn't merely make OS/2. It was a collaboration with Microsoft.
But Microsoft stabbed IBM in the back and made a competitive product called Windows. Perhaps you might have heard of it.
Much of Windows was based off OS/2. Windows even had a similar UI to OS/2.
Every part of EEE happened to OS/2. Microsoft embraced it. They extended it. And OS/2 was extinguished in 2001.
Why was this possible? I suspect a big reason is that OS/2 was proprietary, not open source.
Another way Microsoft tried "embrace, extend, and extinguish" -- and they probably would have succeeded if not for Linux -- was by the Microsoft POSIX subsystem in Windows.
Technically, this subsystem should have allowed apps written for other operating systems to be compiled and run under Windows NT.
In practice, this was a whole-hearted attempt to embrace POSIX, extend it with proprietary Windows NT technology, and extinguish competing *nix operating systems.
I actually feel that "embrace, extend, and extinguish" (#EEE) is over-emphasized.
In actuality, Microsoft used a variety of strategies in order to further their monopoly.
One of the most well-known cases is when Microsoft funded the famous SCO vs. IBM lawsuit in an attempt to kill Linux.
Another example is how Microsoft would literally threaten OEMs if they ever offered another OS that would come pre-installed on computers. That strategy was actually the most effective -- not EEE. Numerous competitors couldn't even enter the market because Microsoft had so thoroughly scared hardware vendors.
EEE was just one tactic amongst many to maintain Microsoft's monopoly.
@atomicpoet I don't know how well documented this is, but Microsoft threatened to pull its sponsorship of a nonproffit if they didn't fire someone working on Linux accessibility. This was back in the early 2000's.
@atomicpoet Ex-MSFT here, spent years working on the Windows kernel. I have to say that while that may appear to be the reason for the POSIX subsystem, the reality was that it was for gov compliance. At the time the Federal gov required POSIX support in order to approve purchases of an operating system. The MS POSIX subsystem was almost unusable, it literally supported the minimum spec in order to permit legal gov purchases of the OS. Nothing more, nothing less.
WSL is when MS started taking this stuff seriously (I was not there for that, however).
@atomicpoet no version of Windows was ever based off OS/2. The DOS extender series (1.0 to ME) started before OS/2 was even a thing, and while Windows NT was originally intended to be a successor to OS/2, it was developed independently and the whole point of the backstabbing was in that MS refused to implement the OS/2 API altogether —it never “extended” it, it was plain competition. And given your preference for technical reasons for the failure of open protocols to gain traction >
This is why I don't like using EEE in this context. EEE was a specific product strategy, and it was employed against closed-source for-profit companies. It notably doesn't seem to work against OSS.
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