Its about time. I hope the incentives stay strong enough, and dont require hoops to jump through. otherwise the gray/blackmarkets could out-bid the bounty and cut the red tape to incentivise their own acquisition of the exploits in question.
Much respect to Microsoft and their new found love of bounty programs, but pioneer is a bit of a stretch - they launched their first bounty program in 2013, well after third party bug bug buyers like ZDI, and even after BugCrowd and other bug bounty as a service companies launched.
