A lot of us "young" devs grew up on windows and remember what a hostile place it was to learn. My disdain for Microsoft is anything but lazy, I have worked very hard not to have to develop for Windows.
I think if you pull your head out of the sand you'll find many serious projects that don't depend on Microsoft. 99% of Web servers run *nix and any project done for the web doesn't need windows. How many billions of dollars are being made on Android and iOS?
As far as I'm concerned Microsoft has squandered any goodwill they may have been due, if they deserve any credit it is for driving me to open source.
Do pray tell, how many more people were brought onto the web using IE and AOL than some janky 'nix browser?
As much as everyone bitches about them, the entire reason we even have affordable desktops and laptops enabling this magical open-source revolution is because of the work Microsoft did in the 80s and 90s.
Because no one else would have filled that void...
That's like saying if Henry Ford had never mass produced cars, no one would have figured it out...
Yes MS created the PC ecosystem in the 90's, but if they hadn't, someone else would have (Apple? IBM? Maybe even Sun?). Market pressure would have eventually driven down prices, it always does...
Apple was busy shooting itself in the foot as a boutique brand. IBM was not interested in lowering prices. Sun (and SGI for that matter) were heavily wed to the workstation and high-end server market.
Microsoft (and Intel) by careful work made it possible for cheaper hardware to still run a product people wanted, and so create the market pressures you're referring to.
They were a pure software company, and used that to enable competition in the hardware market.
As far as I'm concerned Microsoft has squandered any goodwill they may have been due, if they deserve any credit it is for driving me to open source.