I've come to the realization that Microsoft's strategy of Embrace Extend Extinguish is literally a 1-for-1 textbook implementation of the process of recuperation, specifically it's a recuperation of the radical FOSS counterculture. I'm suspecting that some Microsoft executive read Marxist theory as a guide on how to do a better capitalism.

  • sysgen [none/use name,they/them]
    ·
    2 years ago

    The original idea of capitalist recuperation is that capitalism would take a radical movement or idea, twists them in a way to remove their radical character while preserving the aesthetics, and then commodify them into a profitable aesthetic.

    The analogy I'm drawing is that that the EEE movement by Microsoft towards free/libre software (and generally communal software movements) is essentially a practical, step by step implementation of this phenomenon. They first embraced free/libre software so as to make the community more vulnerable to diversion, then by extending it Microsoft creates products which allow it to have an effective impact on the movement, and then slowly this impact is used to defuse and commodify the movement, leading to extinction.

    • RNAi [he/him]
      ·
      2 years ago

      Could you tell me when did microsoft do this? Recently or that's how they became Microsoft?

      • Wheaties [she/her]
        ·
        2 years ago

        As memory serves me, supposedly Bill Gates wrote an article for a college computer magazine where he pointed out that you could make a successful computer company by taking all the code being shared between universities and repackaging it as a product to be sold. A year latter, he dropped out of college.