Firstly, with the shift to the cloud, cross-platform was inevitably going to become more important - Linux is much loved in the server space.
Secondly, they realised the importance of developers in the shift to the cloud - their cloud, Azure, and also their DevOps tooling, Azure DevOps (and later Github).
Do I think their positive moves were altruistic? No, of course not - they are a corporation, a public one at that, and ultimately must generate money for their stakeholders.
But that doesn't mean their positive moves can't benefit me, or the development community, at the same time.
Honestly, the embrace & extinguish thing became a tired meme long ago; Microsoft are not somehow special in occasionally fucking someone over - every large corporation does this. It doesn't excuse it, of course, but the point is it's not a "Microsoft thing", and it doesn't invalidate all the goodwill they have generated in the past decade or so.
If the "goodwill" is the result of calculated manipulation, which is what even you seem to believe, then I would hope that invalidates it thoroughly.
As to the reason for the change I think we're saying the same thing. If they could have snuffed out Linux, they would have. Their ongoing antitrust problems helped prevent that, allowing the Linux ecosystem to flourish. They have since been unable to abuse the power that they no longer have.
Again, time will tell if you're right thinking that Microsoft is merely just as awful as other large companies. But reasonable people can assume that it will be just as bad as before if they regain their power.
Firstly, with the shift to the cloud, cross-platform was inevitably going to become more important - Linux is much loved in the server space.
Secondly, they realised the importance of developers in the shift to the cloud - their cloud, Azure, and also their DevOps tooling, Azure DevOps (and later Github).
Do I think their positive moves were altruistic? No, of course not - they are a corporation, a public one at that, and ultimately must generate money for their stakeholders.
But that doesn't mean their positive moves can't benefit me, or the development community, at the same time.
Honestly, the embrace & extinguish thing became a tired meme long ago; Microsoft are not somehow special in occasionally fucking someone over - every large corporation does this. It doesn't excuse it, of course, but the point is it's not a "Microsoft thing", and it doesn't invalidate all the goodwill they have generated in the past decade or so.