That's how large corporations work... you have different business units managed by different people, sometimes with dramatically different cultures. The problem is, people like to personify companies, most of that comes from executive leadership and in the case of MS, it's effectively a different 'person' today as a couple decades ago.
Re:Microsoft's “Love” of Linux
by rtempaccount1 on Thursday November 21, 2019 @03:46PM
(#21599399)
I'm not sure that's a bad thing, if I'm honest.
Strong top-down direction can work (e.g. Steve Jobs at Apple) but it can also cause ossification (e.g. Blackberry) where a company won't sacrifice an existing product to move forward.
Windows server has obviously lost the app server market, for a majority of companies. MS has adapted to that new reality by supporting Linux servers.
I'd say that is to their credit. Look at other companies who have been slower to adapt to the new cloud world (e.g. Oracle) and you can see the costs to their long term viability.
Some groups fight the good fight, some groups do bad things to get ahead, some groups don't know what they're doing or are pressured by bad management, other groups operate extremely well but are assigned to the wrong tasks.