Microsoft is losing Builders fast. They’re switching to MacOS and Linux. The biggest pull keeping people on Windows, outside of shear inertia, is content creation and gaming. However, even these are falling to Linux.
Without Builders, you don’t have software, and without software, you don’t have users. This is why Microsoft needs Windows Lite.
Yeah, the proprietary software grift is all about extorting companies with legal liability, hostage data, etc.
Some of Microsoft’s corporate products are actually quite good, if very boring. I would love it if Linux had some version of Active Directory, although Microsoft’s attempts to cloudify it are a very annoying. Fortunately you can just ignore that, at least for now.
They also get a lot of credit for releasing VSCode for free as well.
There are many alternatives to Active Directory, some even cross-platform. Microsoft basically has a monopoly in such things because those alternatives don’t work well on Windows (both OS and Server).