> I've watched with great interest over time how Microsoft has evolved from closed source to open source. IMHO, Much of their motivation derives from huge demand from the community to open source their software.

I am not a Microsoft hater but that is half true. The fact of the matter is that in 2010-2012ish their tech stack basically wasn't cool anymore and back then if you had cut me I would have bled Microsoft blue. The fact of the matter is that newest Juniors don't like working with the old Microsoft stack. Outside of .NET core everything release (including the newer versions of Visual Studio since 2010) hasn't really been adopted.

> Developers benefit in several ways by being able to quickly fix bugs, possibility (depends on project) of adding a feature, and desire to contribute to the community on software they like.

Is this a copy and paste answer of the "benefits of open source"?

The point I was making was that these huge companies (all of the large companies) have taken open source software and put most of the useful bits to tie it all together and put it behind pay walls (PaaS).

If a patch or a set of patches is not in <insert big companies interest> it probably won't be allowed in the project. Forks of these projects generally die because there isn't a dedicated resource unlike <insert large company can provide>.

> There has also been several products that Microsoft has decided to stop providing, but have lived on through community adoption, which is huge if developers have dedicated their own time to learn and integrate the software with their own projects over time.

Which ones? Almost everything that isn't officially in the Microsoft repos for the most part is dead. The few things that are .NET that have survived are quite small tbh.

> Open source also gives developers a say in the development of products, watching it being built in the open, influencing direction/features, and making it easier to understand what the code does under the hood. Additionally, Microsoft has embraced and supported 3rd party open source for a number of years, building on their relationship with the community.

Gives how much of a say. Not much I would reckon.