Microsoft has already forked mono and built it into its own .net run time for Linux and no longer needs the mono project. Presumably it's no longer going to invest in the mono project or try to maintain any kind of parity.

I can’t decide if this move is designed to overwhelm (or at least increase the workload of) the Wine team so that they can’t do as good a job reducing people’s dependence on Windows with their core product, or whether this is part of my prediction playing out - MS abandoning kernel/OS development in favour of a skinned Linux on which they can still harvest data and sell subscriptions.

In any case charity from a corporation is never truly charitable!

Microsoft insuring that applications are cross-compatible so they can release Microsoft Linux (windows 13).

I mean, they make more money with Office 365 than with Windows. They could just support Linux and not lose a lot of money

Well that's surprising. Maybe they wanted to lower cost or something.