I Imagined that people would draw the inference themselves, but obviously not. The internal culture of any corporation dictates how it interacts with the world. The phrase "Independent Software Vendor" is an example of the weird nature of the Microsoft ecosystem - the only explanation I ever get for what "Independent" means is "not Microsoft". The Microsoft monoculture leaches out into everything to do with the Windows platform. The obvious example would be something like Team Foundation Server - it's as if Microsoft as an entity can't imagine software being developed outside of a complex corporate structure that requires "lifecycle management". The fact that Microsoft are so deeply engaged with their developer community only strengthens the effect of this monoculture. There are an astonishing number of professional programmers whose entire knowledge of practical software development comes from the MSDN - after all, it provides everything you need to know, so why go elsewhere? The number of developers who have never heard of github is quite astounding.

The best analogy I can give is an anecdote from James Meek -

"One day in 1992, just after the USSR collapsed, I met a mid-ranking officer from the old Soviet interior ministry on a train heading to southern Ukraine. He'd lived in the Soviet system since he was born half a century earlier and knew no other way of doing things. We got talking. He was astounded when I told him that in Britain we had no ID cards or system of residence permits to keep track of who lived where. I saw a look of panicked incomprehension forming on his face and waited for a question such as, "How do you keep tabs on people, then?" What he actually asked was, "How do you know how much bread to make?""