> I wonder why it took Ballmer getting out for a "developers developers developers" philosophy to actually be adopted.

At least from the outside I always got the impression he was stuck in the last decade where many thought giving our source code was only for unemployed linux geeks and competitors would steal your products. I'm not sure if he was really like that but that was almost my impression.

I know many who managed companies around the same timeframe that at least thought that way.