This was a terrible decision, I agree.
> to have any motivations other than "whatever makes us the most money as possible".
Well they are a corporation. That's the end goal of any corporation.
> Implemented extremely-invasive data collection in Windows 10
This I don't agree with though. Yes, they collected data, and that is wrong. I was pissed off too. However, it was not as invasive as made it out to be. They did not track the websites we browse. They did not track who we communicate with like Google, Facebook and other such companies do. I would trust Microsoft with my data and privacy over Google and Facebook. And yet most of us use Google services without a second thought.
Another thing I dislike about Windows is the bloatware and ads in Start.
However, this does not negate their recent contributions. Is the end goal for these contributions to make more money? Absolutely. But that does not mean we should not welcome the good stuff from Microsoft just because its Microsoft.
Does this have any bearing on Microsoft's support for Open Source?
- Forcibly upgraded as many Windows 7 and 8 machines to Windows 10 as possible without really asking permission, so that some manager could make their adoption metrics look better. - Implemented extremely-invasive data collection in Windows 10. - Migrated to a "Windows is a service! Better hope you like not being able to decline updates!" model with Windows 10, where the user no longer has control of their own machine.
I'm a huge fan of C# and Visual Studio, and I think MS SQL Server is arguably the best overall[1] relational database software, but I certainly don't trust them to have any motivations other than "whatever makes us the most money as possible".
[1] I like Postgres a lot and use it myself most frequently for personal projects, but if one has at least a small budget, SQL Server (IMO) has by far the best administration tools of any database and is very reliable.