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Meanwhile, I received an interesting note from a Cringester who identifies himself as an ex-Danger employee. He has the following to report (cleaned up slightly to fix typos):

I recall only too clearly the Monday morning arriving to find, 'Congratulations!, you've just been bought by M$' on the front door. As a long time Linux engineer, I knew what was coming. Still I listened politely to the cooing of, 'we bought you to learn how you do it; you are the experts, we are here to learn from you' and a mere 6 months later, the chant became, 'well, the way WE Do it is, ...'. Yeah, I got it...

Danger grew up for its 7 or so years from a startup to making a living on their own products' income and I, like many, were proud to be contributors to Danger. When I was there, the service organization that provided the back-end service was among the highest priorities in the company, a sacrosanct part that held their responsibility in a cherished embrace.

Sadly, the marauding M$ project managers soon combed though the Danger ranks, taking more and more staff for their dubious development and depleting key Danger activities.