Hi Peter
John is better qualified to answer this than me but I suppose it is all about transparency and freedom of choice. Microsoft has to do all kinds of black box things to protect their products from piracy. It is also a monopoly, and there are many who feel that monopolies if left unchecked, become tyrannies.
Linux distributions usually come with a much wider range of development tools than Microsoft, though this requires a technical mind to use them, and perhaps growing up in the Unix culture.
Charles