They've really done a number on these people, because not only are they using MS stuff again, but they've been turned into "New Microsoft" cheerleaders in many a comment thread, for a couple of years now.
In retrospect, I'm pretty sure that was astroturf.
The story of a how new, enlightened CEO was going to embrace open source, etc. was tailor-made for folks who want to believe they finally won over the last fight's great satan. The buzz seemed to be everywhere for a while, and then stopped. And it was timed conveniently around several open source releases that also made a splash - classic reenforcement advertising.
I was one of the cheerleaders ever since I learned about Scott Hanselman and others. The meta is that there are at least two camps about this at Microsoft.
This changed slowly over the last two years for me as I watch the dot net special interest group at Fedora struggle. Microsoft has not released enough of dot net core as free and open source software. It looks free and open source but it isn't. The programmers at red hat (almost all the dot net sig folks are red hat people) are too nice to raisea fuss over it.
I don't think Scott Guttrie's team is lying. I want to believe in their sincerety. However, I also understand likely nobody at Microsoft: from the bottom engineer to Satya Nadella or the board is nearly at all enthusiastic about free software. They may approve of "open source" but only as far as it helps business. I can't blame them for being practical. However, I can yell at their hypocrisy.
Microsoft, give the fedora people what they need. Release the sources please.
That's why pervasive "Does anyone else love the New Microsoft?!" style comments have seemed odd. People talking about how they like specific products is perfectly normal.
