Yes. It appears that the Linux Foundation has become just another business, a badly run one at that, even if it masquerading as a 501(c)(6).

In the days immediately following the main part of this thread, they appear to have fired their writers for their web site quite unceremoniously. Thus things have been quiet since April 25th or so. Pay records, from that same link,based on IRS form 990 records, show several problems, one is that it is loaded down with dead weight (marketers and managers and such) at the top and many of these seem to be "former" microsofters.

IMHO Microsoft had essentially no choice but to embrace Linux after IBM's acquisition of RedHat. It is important to see this purchase for all that it is or at least very likely will be. At roughly $34 Billion USD, it is the single largest purchase in IBM's 107 year history. By comparison the average yearly expenditure by NASA from 1959 to 2015 has been $8.3 Billion USD including all programs, not just Apollo which took us to The Moon. This purchase is a game-changer of epic proportions putting IBM in business with as well as more competitive with the major players, Amazon, Google, and Microsoft. None of them is particularly fond of FOSS other than for cheap mining but then in IBM's case, assuming they still have and employ a similar business model to the one they used for OS/2, where and when they were quite content to accept lots of free software much of which was created by IBM employees on their own time. It is difficult to predict how similar the model may be since IBM has never been much interested in SOHO Desktops, but there can be little doubt that it will impact the Desktop and probably in major ways.

Back to the topic here, Microsoft could not possibly just ignore such an "All In" bet. They had to at least "Check".