Well, it takes a while but it's great to see native Windows ports of more or less game changing projects like Node and Hadoop (http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2011/10/microsoft-makes...). Although I guess the fact that innovation happens ever more often in non-Microsoft land is telling enough.
While I think it's a bit extreme to say they didn't have much choice, it seems to me making data more open is becoming somewhat trendy and this sort of peer pressure may have certainly played a role in the Royal Society's decision. Anyways, the inertia of the status quo shouldn't be underestimated and although things are really not that fair, it will probably take quite a bit of time before we see widespread democratization of data.