In my mind it is less about the people who made the statements or were there when the statements were made and more about whether the company has the same business model now that it did at the time.

I basically agree with you, but just to play devil's advocate:

> Maybe the relevant factor isn't whether the same people are in place, but rather that the process that selected those people at all, selected both the "linux is cancer" people, as well as the current people. And that process is the same as it was before, optimizing for the same things, and therefore it may try to undermine open source again, once the prevailing cultural winds shift again, regardless of which warm body is currently in the hot seat.

It's a little more of a abstract argument, but I don't think it's insane to consider.

So the debate then becomes about whether the process really is the same or not.

Indeed it is. Same goes for other prominent figures, like Steve Jobs. People were/are convinced that the whole identity, all products and every choice was Jobs-bound and therefore without Jobs, what Apple does can't be just as good as it was when he was alive and running things.

So past CEOs can make a lasting impact, and in many ways it works out badly because the negative comments get the most attention.

Where Apple, according to some louder fans is not as good as it was under Jobs, for Microsoft under Nadella the inverse is true: according to the haters, just because it looks better now doesn't mean the (to them) bad years are gone.

Generalising, no matter what direction a transition takes (good to bad or bad to good), it's always the loud messages pointing out the bad past or bad future that gets the most attention and influences choices the most.

It's almost like trust between people: doing things right 99% of the time but doing one thing wrong once always makes that 99% of 'good' disappear and only the bad is taken as the 'true' value. In the extreme: lie once, and you are a liar. Even if you are 99 years old and have never lied before. That one time, once, will be what defines you as 'bad', and the rest does not outweigh it. Of course in reality that extreme example is not super likely, but nevertheless, it should carry the point I'm attempting to make ;-)

It's not the sum, aggregate or balance that seems to count, only how 'bad' your 'badness' is.

Is it or is it just the embrace stage of embrace, extend, extinguish?

It would be vital to know what made MS change their stance against Open Source in general and Linux in particular; if it was "we can't beat them directly, so let's destroy them by faking an alliance, possibly gaining also control from the inside" (hint: Linux Foundation platinum membership) then we still have every reason to remain skeptic.

Do you honestly know anyone in the "open source world" who avoids GNU and Linux?

A positive aspect of the article is that includes the full cite and not the shortened version.