>>12
move from a product-based business model to a service-based model
Yes, this is what they want to do, but they'll have a little problem. Today everybody has Windows to run the stuff Microsoft and the guys who depend on Microsoft do, but if they finally find a way to end with piracy, I bet they'll get 10% the userbase. And if people don't use their platform, people won't depend on their stuff so much...
an inferior imitation of Sun's work
For what I've heard, C# is a better language than Java and the C# API is better than Java's (then again, that's not saying much in terms of design, simplicity and efficiency).
I will never code in C#.
I'm not particularly interested in C#, but I've heard there are people doing C# compilers that regardless of their platform (I've heard Windows and Linux) and opensauceness (I've heard they are, but even if they weren't) they do not depend on anything from Microsoft so you're free to use the language.
(Likewise, when you do something in Java, Sun owns a lot of it, only I'd trust Sun more than Microsoft... for now.)