I was actually surprised that there was only as much negative sentiment as there is. Microsoft could cure cancer and the post to HN would be mostly negative. It's tribal. It doesn't even matter what they do at this point.

That being said, you can see more and more people getting off the "Microsoft is evil" train. It's super slow and every bone headed thing that Microsoft does resets the needle for lots of people.

I've always been surprised how much sympathy a company like IBM or Intel gets on HN. They both sue people over patents. That both contribute to non-free software. They were early backers of Linux, though, and that is what people care about superficially.