I vividly remember the meeting I went to in 2003 with a bunch of Microsoft bloggers and lawyers -- it was one of the few times Raymond Chen and I were in the same room. :-)

It was astonishing because of what the lawyers said: yes, it is a public relations risk to have ordinary employees communicating directly with the developer community, and we are willing to take on that risk if it dramatically improves our satisfaction metrics in the developer community.

We were basically told "don't be stupid, don't share corporate secrets, comport yourselves professionally, keep it on-topic, and if there are legal problems, legal will handle them appropriately".

I don't know that things would be the same today; it was a different time. But I'd hope so.