Plenty of stuff in the Linux world was done naming Microsoft in adversarial terms - that was definitely not the case on the desktop. All three main groups (GNOME, KDE, and Unity) always, always stated they were making bold design choices for practical reasons related to UX. To claim otherwise, today, seems very disingenuous.
Yes, I frankly find this blog quite dubious. I have followed the Linux landscape very keenly for over 20 years and never before heard the claim that the infamous new UI paradigms in Gnome 3 & Unity had anything to do with Microsoft patents. It was instead framed as open source taking the design initiative for next generation "convergent" UIs, which was all the rave back then (one design/OS for workstation, laptop, tablet, phone, TV, etc.)
Microsoft's interpretation of the same trend was Windows 8 and later Universal Windows Platform (UWP). They almost all seem to have fallen flat on the face, and especially on the open source side the "bold new direction" seemed to alienate many users. But blaming Microsoft for this sounds like an odd attempt at historical revisionism.
I still don't think the portrayal of these events as stemming from patent issues is realistic. First of all, that Acacia Research lawsuit concerned some 1980s Xerox patents "that protect computer GUIs that span multiple work sites and that allow users to access icons remotely."[1] How would changing the GNOME UI to remove a Start-button-like menu protect Linux distributors from such litigation?
That lawsuit was filed in October 2007, and would be accurately described as patent troll litigation. While it did not have Microsoft as a party, nor did it claim infringement of Microsoft's IP, that article does note that only days before Ballmer had warned that Linux vendors could face similar patent troll litigation as Microsoft had faced in the past and that the patent troll had hired a senior Microsoft IP manager.
While this would have surely prompted some warranted speculation in the community, was it - or the threat of direct M$ litigation - the impetus for reworking the GNOME 3 Shell and building Ubuntu Unity?
GNOME 3 was announced in summer 2008, and at least this one in-depth articles I could find makes no mention of any patent litigation connection.[2] Instead, it notes that the progress towards the "audacious reinvention of the desktop with completely new interaction paradigms" had started already in 2005 with a concept called ToPaZ. Mind you that's well before the whole Acacia Research lawsuit.
GNOME 3 was released in April 2011. Ubuntu Unity was an alternative version of GNOME 3's Shell. Its development forked in the advanced stages of GNOME 3, in late 2010. The cited reason was "tension over design issues" between Canonical's and GNOME's designers.[3] Nothing seems to again hint that Ubuntu would have taken this step to shield itself from patent trolls or Microsoft.
Maybe the reason why nobody can remember this is because it did not happen? We're talking about events well over a decade old after all. There could have been speculation at the time that it was all connected to this lawsuit, but I don't think Canonical and Red Hat would have really done it for that reason. Software patents are terrible because any non-trivial piece of code almost surely infringes on some patent, and defending against patent suits is expensive. Surely these companies would have realized that even if the desktop UI was changed not to supposedly infringe on one patent, there would soon be another troll claiming infringement on another patent?
I'll go a step further. The author of the article is deceiving himself and his audience to apologize for terrible decisions in OSS, separate from Microsoft, which is no saint either. This is historical revisionism that the creator of GNOME, in this very comment thread, throws out.
