I'm not sure about you, but "developer evangelist" sounds pretty rank and file to me. Searching his name he's apparently now a "Senior Software Engineer" on linkedin (can't click in, getting a login wall), which supports this.

This person, as an evangelist, spoke at an official event run by the company. That's why I think they're special.

You'd think that something as important as "we won't ever launch more editions of our most popular piece of software ever" would be disseminated more widely and across more channels than one "developer evangelist" interview in a conference? If that's real (ie. some sort of position that senior management actually approved), that is.

I don't doubt he thought he was telling the truth, or that there was a general sense within the organization that windows 10 was going to get continually updated rather than having new editions every 3 years. Windows 10 did adopt this model for 6 years. But painting it as some sort of official promise from the organization seems tenuous.

I think we're agreeing, but yelling past each other

Right, I concede that "developer evangelist [...] at the company's Ignite conference" is slightly more reputable than just "random dev". That said I don't believe it materially changes the argument.