There are two new Microsofts, both trying to make great big piles of money.

One is the tech infrastructure provider. They're keeping the corporate customers but now also going after consumer-facing tech and startups. To do the latter, they've finally had to shed their dogma and go where the devs are. OSS, platform-agnostic, this is the MS of .NET Core, VSCode, and family. There's good people working here, and they'll make Azure make heaps of money.

The other Microsoft does "platforms". They've had a lock on corporate for a long time, though no one enjoyed it. Now they want to expand their brand and their lock-in into the personal lives of upper-class knowledge workers, challenging Apple by being the "serious" to Apple's luxury-hipster positioning, and challenging Google by being coherent and playing a long game.

The first Microsoft knows that the second is no place for their audience, so they're in a hurry to separate themselves and their wares from the platform-provider. It's not just .NET Core and VSCode, there's a ton of smaller projects all moving in the same direction. Sql Operations Studio, Sql Server for Linux, Blazor, x-plat Azure tooling, x-plat Powershell, opensourcing MSBuild, it's comprehensive.

I wish they'd just split and become two separate companies.

I see many arguments incoming defending Microsoft and getting more or less visibility depending on the audience at the time. Something along the lines of:

"Let's compare it to some competitor who also does it wrong. See they are not doing any better but they are not criticized as much. How can you complain about this company then? You can't. We must be glad for what they give us. See how much good they do and how little you have achieved compared to an international giant. If you really want to do better go make your own store. You can't? Obviously you can't. Then you can't criticize."

But the bottom line is that all these companies are ruled by money first and foremost. Sure, there are differences in detail and the approach they take but in the end the logic of money trumps all morals.

For the "new" Microsoft this means that they have changed their approach because of money. Whatever good they do for us is because they think it will make them money in the long run. I think of it as a long running PR action and a medium change of company culture. If it suits them, they will change it back over night. WE must keep them under pressure to do the right thing by not letting us be held hostage by monopolies and always having a way out. So support your open source software because in the long run it will dominate in most places.