It isn't that it's nefarious but rather that people who adopted Microsoft late rationalize that the company has a maligned history (some deserved, some not) by

It isn't that it's nefarious but rather that people who adopted Microsoft late rationalize that the company has a maligned history (some deserved, some not) by declaring that everything is different now. This appears in conversation after conversation where some current Microsoft enthusiast declares that everything was crap, but now it's wonderful. But a lot of things were already very good to excellent. I mean, one of the things you mentioned was developer friendliness yet the company has forever had industry leading developer relations. They've always had great documentation (there are going to be some developers who will still struggle and fail, but that isn't the fault of the documentation which can only drag them so far). SQL Server has been a great product for literally decades. NT was actually a great OS for the era and vis-a-vis its contemporaries. Microsoft has always been very "open" in fields where they are struggling. And on and on. They did a lot of great things in the past along with bad things. And right now they're doing great things along with bad things. Every org is a mixed bag.