HN has always hated anything out of Redmond, both justified and not. There's good reasons for it, the halloween documents and the EEE era are not easily forgotten so I sympathize somewhat, but not all corps are treated equally here. Google and Apple will regularly get a pass for doing the same stuff Microsoft did or does.

Outside of the SV bubble .NET will continue to be one of the most productive platforms to work within, and is continuing to grow in market share. Hardly a failure.

That being said, I do see the meaning behind where OP is coming from. There is a certain, shall we say, enterprise, culture around .NET (much like Java) that hasn't caught up yet, or hasn't fully embraced the new world of open source from Microsoft.