alt Hacker NewsAnd in B2B or B2G you have customers with checklists of features they don't actually need because the person who wrote the checklist is friends with or paid by a particular supplier, or just operating on old information.
That's how you get Windows subsystem for POSIX. Someone in the government had a checklist saying they'd only buy a POSIX compliant operating system, so Microsoft made one. Amusingly, Linux isn't (mostly because who would pay for that certification?)
Building on standards like POSIX prevents vendor lock-in, which is beneficial in the long run because it prevents the vendor from holding you hostage once you start relying on the system. It's a sensible requirement.
Microsoft's deliberately useless POSIX support is a result of Microsoft acting in bad faith and sabotaging the efforts, as usual, because the lock-in is what they want. Just like they did with OpenDocument, for example. And what they tried to do with Java and the web.