Mutiny over the bounty

Ed Brill links to this CRN article that talks about a “bounty” being offered to partners who convert customers from Notes or Oracle. Two brief thoughts (I’d write more but have too many other more pressing things to do). Disclaimer: I don’t have any specific knowledge of this program, or any other one for that matter.
First, if this is like other MS programs, the “bounty” is actually funny money and a non-story. Let’s say the partner moves a 1,000-seat organization and (according to whatever criteria MS has) the bounty is $20/seat. That means that the partner gets up to $20,000 from Microsoft to either spend on MS consulting / design / deployment services (via MCS) or to use for application and data transition. IOW, Microsoft is paying the partner to do work that the customer would otherwise have to pay for themselves. This is hardly what Ed makes it out to be, with his sinister implication that MS is “plucking” “pieces of meat”. Sheesh. It’s the logical equivalent of the car dealer giving you a tank of free gas when you buy the car.
Second note: I’ll bet a nickel that IBM has similar programs for selected competitors. Why? If you want sales people to do something, you have to give them incentives, and the #1 incentive in that world is cold hard cash.