Ok, but even if it's about .NET Core; As far as I can tell the creation of .NET Core was a business decision and not because MS suddenly wanted to create a better product.
More then 50% of the VM's in Azure run Linux and not Windows. On AWS and GCP the percentage VM's running non-Windows OS'es is probably even higher. That's a realistic threat to the continued existence of .NET if .NET only runs on Windows.
Aside from the cost of licensing Windows which makes small-sized non-Windows VMs cheaper, there's been a strong pro-Linux bias in academia for a long time that nobody likes to talk about.
> there's been a strong pro-Linux bias in academia for a long time that nobody likes to talk about.
Who doesn't like to talk about it? It's so much easier to integrate components on Linux over windows. Why would anyone willingly use windows for data analysis?