This is nothing but old fashioned rah-rah motivational salesmanship. There's nothing here to support any nefarious behaviour by MS.
BTW, the posting of customer names and other personal information of innocent people is not too cool.
You can get the latest distribution of RedHat (7.2) from www.cheapbytes.com for the cost of the CDs plus shipping, about $15, and it leaves all versions of windows in the dust.