One thing I do regard highly is the focus on testing vs. Alexa's SDK where Amazon don't even seem to be a vaguely concerned.
Words like "intent", "sentiment", and "entities" were standard vernacular for natural language processing long before Amazon decided to jump into the space.
Of course I have probably expressed this a little too strongly, I'm sure there are edge cases to worry about.
- Wit.ai: https://wit.ai/docs/recipes#categorize-the-user-intent
- API.ai: https://docs.api.ai/docs/key-concepts
I would not be surprised if Microsoft would have a problem with the company name. They market themselves as an open source project, but I assume they are in it to sell hardware and make a profit (or exit).
The company name sounds like a contraction of Microsoft to me and initially I misread the title as being another Microsoft open source project.
I'm actually expecting some initiative from Microsoft in exactly this area, with open hardware instead of open software.