I think this is a case of "it doesn't look good, but the more you think about it the less bad it looks." There's a kernel of truth in the unfortunate wording. G

I think this is a case of "it doesn't look good, but the more you think about it the less bad it looks." There's a kernel of truth in the unfortunate wording. GPL (certain versions) is problematic if you want to keep your related code closed source. When I interned at Microsoft, you had to get approval from legal to use open sourced code specifically for copyright liability reasons. I'm sure Ballmer also disliked Linux for other reasons, but this line makes for an ambiguous example of it. Given that Microsoft has been pretty enthusiastic about tools like VSCode and Linux support on Azure, I'm personally cautiously optimistic with Nadella at the helm.