Clearly not true. Microsoft had a position of industry dominance in the mid to late 1990s, money was never in short supply. They couldn't be the leader of open source back then because of their culture and attitude toward open source. The open source industry knew it and the dislike was mutual. Even if they had wanted to, they couldn't have purchased loyalty from open source users & developers, while simultaneously behaving as they were.

If talking about heart and greed is all that's left to burn Microsoft with at this point, then they must really be knocking it out of the park.