I think he was well meaning. And at some point he just gave up.

As a long time Linux user I agree with him. FOSS is just not conducive to the kind of development needed for a high quality, long term stable desktop experience.

Why do you assume the correlation that he wrote this kind of articles to be hired be Microsoft? Isn't it much more likely that he had the posed point of view for all the time, but it did not become accepted in the GNU/Linux world. On the other hand Microsoft wanted to expand their .net ecosystem to Linux and mobile devices, so they bought Xamarin and hired Miguel de Icaza.