Yes they were and they are. You can see it regularly on HN, saying that today's Microsoft has nothing to do with the ugly beast from the 90s, the times have changed, they are now a completely different company, they contribute to Open Source and even Linux, and they can now be trusted because they built the best code editor in the world. I don't know if people actually are that naive or if it's a part of Microsoft's intensive efforts to game HN.
It's a little of column "a" and a little of column "b" and also because there's a whole generation which has come and gone since the Halloween Papers and the general MS fuckery of the 90's.
