I would say the malice is from management, investors, and product leads. Developers just do what they are told. Microsoft is choosing enshitification versus quality. CEO needs to pump that stock and having enterprise locked into without alternatives helps them.

I grew up with Microsoft and now you have to pay me to use their products. I would never choose their OS for product hosting. Even their embedded / IoT is trying to force a Microsoft account and push against local user.

Or are they trying to move users onto other platforms, more modern platforms that users are more comfortable paying for.

Desktops existed before punching in your credit card numbers was a common thing, that history is hard to shrug.

Xbox for gamers, mobile for everyone else and business editions of windows for the enterprise.