Microsoft has a long history of not being so nice when they have an advantage. How much of that is leadership driven, and how much is built into the corporate culture and structure? It's knee-jerk, but it's not crazy to think about.
That's a single person. Microsoft is many thousands of people, and the most important decision makers have changed. In your analogy, you're considering whether to loan money to an almost completely different person.
That's the exact argument I was making. The analogy doesn't work because this is, literally, a new Microsoft. It has new leadership. You can't use the past as a benchmark for how this company will behave because no one really knows what parts of the company's behavior and culture have changed and what parts haven't.
Yes. They made a 180° turn already. Who says they won't do another?
Customer lock-in isn't Bill Gates' idea. It's a very tempting strategy that you can find virtually everywhere where companies think it'll gain them money.
Big Corporations can have mixed messages. Apple (My most hated company in Tech has also been very good to Open Source with some projects)
GPL isn't the only license in town, and clearly there are disadvantages to it.
The point is, they released it as open-source, which is what we are talking about in this thread.
They didn't have a monopoly on spreedsheets or word processors in the early 90s either..
Microsoft's entire leadership has turned over and it's easy to see that their culture is very different from the days you're talking about.
Also, they don't have a monopoly on nearly anything and certainly not on Javascript engines. They couldn't move to the "Extend, Extinguish" phases even if they wanted to.