You took the words right out of my mouth. The re-branding / imaging that's going on is nothing more than marketing hype.
Microsoft is changing, and how far they are changing is to be seen.
Calling them villains unable to change or calling them as innocent as new lambs is strawmanning.
The point people are making is that the only thing that has changed so far with Microsoft is their methods. And that their new methods still align with their old tactics and goals.
Would you call a gang member that now uses guns instead of knives a "changed man"?
Does this analogy really fit? Microsoft put an advert in their file explorer and now we're comparing them to violent criminals?
The IRA stopped using bombs and guns, and took up pens and microphones. Their political goals never changed, but their methods did.
I'd say they're changed men. Using arguments instead of violence is ultimately a good thing.
Gang members often don't have a goal of "I wanna rob people". They want money. If they put on suits and ties and become software engineers because the pay is better---they're changed men.
So what does Microsoft want?
The most trite statement would be that they want market dominance and money for their shareholders. A "good" Microsoft would be one who due to government regulation or social approval cannot do bad things to achieve dominance.
This is the balancing act that we play with all companies---they want money, and society forces them to only gain money in socially approved ways thus we all benefit.
Look at how they're behaving with Windows 10 (and 8 before it). That should be enough to tell you that they have no desire at all to change.
That's not just HN. It's the state of discourse in general in 2017, particularly among internet strangers. You're either on my side 100% or you're wrong.
A classic example is Apple under Jobs. They weren't ethical (locked down iPhone) but they weren't obtuse.
WSL is a classic "shut up and take my money" - it's not open source, it doesn't let me write cross platform GUI, it just let's me keep windows as a desktop when me server is Linux.
The only thing is that MS (under Ballmer) was obtuse and didn't realize they lost the server, and now they do.
VSCode isn't cannibalizing their existing VS installations, its cannibalizing Sublime and Atom. So the most they spend on it is a team of programmers? It pays with mind share.
With .NET core also, they realized that no startup will touch .NET on the server because they don't want to spend money on a windows license. As MS isn't interested in being Oracle, they OS .Net for the server.
Note, they didn't OS .net for the desktop.
What will happen when they'll be be on top again? Will they keep Open Sourcing things (like Google is doing) or will it go back to Closed Source vendor lockin?