No, this is pure, fabricated nonsense. People involved in those projects, e.g. Miguel de Icaza, have told you numerous times, as have a lot of users who lived through that time.
But the MS threats are a matter of widespread legal record. This is not some kooky opinion of mine. This happened, it's documented, and the responses are too.
For instance, Novell (owners of SUSE then) and Red Hat were specifically named:
This was my current employers on it, but long before I ever wrote for them even as a freelancer:
https://www.theregister.com/2006/11/20/microsoft_claims_linu...
Everyone covered it. It was THE big new story about MS versus Linux.
https://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2007...
https://www.engadget.com/2007-05-14-microsoft-linux-and-othe...
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2007/05/microsoft-235-pa...
https://www.networkworld.com/article/2355239/microsoft-claim...
It was already a thing back in 2004:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4021775.stm