That is one smart move by Microsoft. Microsoft definitely seems like it is heading in the right direction. I'm quite excited to see what Microsoft have under their sleeves. Faster release cycles for Internet Explorer (like any other popular browsers) would be a killer move by them, IMO.
I don't see what's so amazing about this move. SO is well established at this point and Microsoft are just moving a small subset of their vast technical support effort to another platform.
It is an excellent publicity stunt, though. It'll certainly fuel more of the "Microsoft has turned over a new leaf" discussion, but in the grand scheme of things with all their previous announcements like open-sourcing the C# compiler and .NET platform, this is a pretty negligible move.
It may be negligible, but for me it's evidence of a humility that I haven't seen before. "Old Microsoft" would never have publicly admitted that MSDN was inferior to SO, and if they admitted it privately their response would have been to build a replacement. Hell, Ballmer would have been throwing tables at anyone who suggested this during his tenure.
One step at a time. Same thing I tell people about legalizing marijuana. You will never get everything you want, all at once. But if you go little by little...
