I don’t know why anyone would think that of Boeing. They did fuck all for space until acquiring McDonnell Douglas and parts of Rockwell in like 1997. Then they spun most of that off into ULA with Lockheed precisely because they didn’t know what to do with it. Lockheed people have even run ULA for it’s entire existence.
The part of Boeing behind Starliner isn’t all that old. It’s certainly younger and seemingly less talented than ULA.