It's an aggressive move by Microsoft to ensure that technology startups at least consider using Microsoft's tools when they are putting together their initial infrastructure — and comes a time when competitors are bidding for the business of those same startups by offering them low cost,
often open source alternatives.
I hope the time I devote to
open source projects (mostly Drupal) and the times I'm able to choose the
open source projects help prefigure a time when there are more
alternatives, more
often.