Couple? F# and asp.net have been open over 5 years, yes under Steve Balmer. All this is not entirely recent but they have accelerated the pace and extended the scope. If you choose to ignore it, its your prerogative.

OK, so we have what percentage of their products open (admittedly, some of them are pretty significant)? compared to all the other negative they've done? I'm not ignoring anything, and I'm not really sure why you assumed that. In fact, if you blindly say they've turned to the good side, I'd accuse you of the same...

All the bad they've done presumably extending back to the 1990s? A company isn't a person - a significant amount of the workforce, senior management and even the CEO is different than it was back then.

But they chose to stick with that company and culture, presumably that "brand". I'm not saying they can't turn around, but they've still got a long way to go to prove to me this is anything different than EEE.

Also, they didn't just stop in the 90's. A lot of their questionable practices have continued on, and are still going on. I'm not basing my mistrust only on the 90's. It's just one factor out of many, but one I still feel should be taken into account.

It's worth bearing in mind that Microsoft isn't a singular entity. It's a company made up of employees. How many employees from the mid-1990s are there today? How much of their leadership?

How many of the employees that were there in the mid-1990s work at companies you adore or support today? Maybe other companies are where Embrace, Extend, Extinguish lives today.

Technology moves at an incredible pace. Acting like any news story from the mid-1990s is relevant today is incredibly silly.

I agree that it can vary a lot. I'm making generalizations. And I'm not basing it on just the mid-90's. I'm basing it on everything else since then.