Brendan Burns (k8s co-founder) joined Microsoft last July, so this is certainly not their first move in the Kubernetes area.

Definitely not dead. Actively developed and worked on. The release schedule has continued with an unbroken chain of monthly stable releases, while v1 platform was sunset with loads of advance warning time.

I'm hoping the monthly "Town-Hall" style Zoom meetings will continue, but if so I will also expect them to likely start getting much larger quickly, now with this news.

Support for v1 was dropped earlier this year. v2 is still actively developed and worked on. It's even mentioned in the blog post.

Obligatory disclaimer that I'm an engineer @ Deis working on Workflow daily.