I don't think that's an unfounded fear, given their history:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguis...
If Microsoft is not able to exclusively control something, they cannot extinguish it, even if they embrace and extend it.
Times have changed. I mean look, we bought GitHub. That's not a move of someone that's trying to destroy from the inside. If it were, we would have immediately just slow rolled it, but we're actually making improvements.
I don't think we're collectively smart enough (nor are most orgs) to pull off grand conspiracies. Just a bunch of humans trying to do what's right for the company and customers.
So, I agree with your assessment. Lots of good, still bad actors, modern times have changed.
I've never seen a deeply flawed self-enclosed cultured turned into a sane one. I've seen ones change because they were so much injected with outside influenced. I've seen ones change because the core was alright, and it recognized the problem. But never have I seen a team of bullies sticking together and turn into good people.
However, I have seen plenty of them putting up a smile, getting some green paint on and buying a stairway to heaven.
It's a shame people keep falling for it though. That's why politicians can be crooked. That's why abusive relationships last. That's why you can pollute, use children workers and lie to customers: by the time you pay the price, it's a slap on the wrist compared to what you did, and earned from it.
Then you just say you changed, and people forget or forgive, let you keep the loot, and the right to carry on with your business.
MS is one of the most valuable companies in the world, and regularly surpasses Apple, Amazon, Google and Facebook as the most valuable company in the world.
> I've never seen a deeply flawed self-enclosed cultured turned into a sane one.
I doubt that your definition of sanity is at all useful here. You're obviously not familiar with the core teams that comprise MS and you're not disseminating any information here that is even remotely useful.
I guess you're safe in the bubble here though where people think Windows is simply unusable because some of the control panel windows have a different dressing than other ones and that macOS is the best despite that it's missing the most basic window management features! Hah!!
If you were capable of reading at all at that time, it was one scandal every year.
lol
But really, it's something easily judged over time. Everyone will be able to judge how our open source attitude is in coming years.
And hay, look, there's more absorption of Linux into Windows... Is that embrace extend, or recognize reality? Or hold on for dear life? From my perspective, it's evolution, and nothing but good.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeo_Danaos_et_dona_ferentes
and cautious about these kind of corporate mentality changes, it seems to have been proved a valid approach for the last 2 thousand years or so.
Microsoft will always have its share of bad actors, make mistakes, and act in unpleasant ways. Any large company or institution will do. The question is whether these occasions represent standard operating procedure or just the statistical expected baseline quantity of misbehaviour.
There's no doubt that, in the past, Microsoft had a culture that allowed and encouraged bad behaviour at an individual, tactical and strategic level. I'm not convinced that is the case anymore. However, the aforementioned baseline misbehaviour means you will always be able to cherry-pick a collection of individuals and incidents to support a pre-ordained narrative of evilness, if that fits your worldview.