Works (-ed) for Microsoft!!!!!!
Its not any worse than the programmer-crack of offering EXPRESS (Free) versions of all of your Visual Studio languages AND then hosting/blogging (Usenet) sorts of sites to get people to "write" about it. Heck the VS2008 Express has the entire suite of software of the VS2008 Pro version just stripped back a little bit.
Not any worse than offering CTPs that strangely don't time out when expected.
Last time I looked (months ago) Windows LIVE was still giving away websites (crappy ones, but still free).
Biting the hand that feeds IT
