They seem to have had that strategy for a very long time -- entice developers to lock in end users. It worked quite well obviously, but I myself still find a good REPL, solid CLI tools, and fully open source code all the way down to the BIOS even more enticing.
I'm looking forward to seeing what Microsoft's "next" is; they've tried a lot of "nexts" that didn't always pan out.
> We have no intentions on building for Windows Phone or Windows OS and they know that
That is the biggest change in Microsoft IMHO. Talking from personal experience - in the past whenever we worked with MS they always put in stupid requirements such as we had to support X or Y (with X and Y being some new Microsoft technology/platform/product).
It was abuse of their position so I am glad to see this is changing.
Yeah I was in total shock yesterday when I found out they are phasing out app fabric caching in favor of REDIS. Glad times are finally catching up to them, but it feels so much like Sun.. Too little, too late.
I'm looking forward to seeing what Microsoft's "next" is; they've tried a lot of "nexts" that didn't always pan out.