It's pretty simple, they make a lot of money off Azure, and open source software is a complement to Azure. See the classic: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002

It's pretty simple, they make a lot of money off Azure, and open source software is a complement to Azure. See the classic: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/06/12/strategy-letter-v/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/06/12/strategy-letter-v/ In particular, open source software prevents people from getting locked into any of the AWS, Linux, iOS, or Android ecosystems. All of those are popular software development ecosystems that Microsoft does not own or influence very much.