In a sense that is what you would expect... It is consistent for Ballmer to claim that it was the wrong side of history and that they made the right choice at t

In a sense that is what you would expect... It is consistent for Ballmer to claim that it was the wrong side of history and that they made the right choice at the time. The fact that they lost on their side does not mean they would have surely won had they joined open source sooner. It is conceivable that they would have poisoned the ecosystem and delayed the community by years. Microsoft is not Mozilla, of course they think they can make money with OSS, the criticism should either be that they took a long time to realize or that they might be abusing OSS. In the article they say that the vision/estimations they had for the future of OSS was wrong, nothing more nothing less.