Cloudant is a business, and this is great for their financials, as well as for furthering the research in their tech stack. From reading it, I'm sure many on Hacker News use similar tools that will benefit from the research done by Cloudant.
Example from my admittedly poor memory: A farmer's neighbor bought Monsanto's genetically modified seeds and some of the seeds blew into the farmers flield. Monsanto sued him and made him destroy all his seeds. When the farmer complained to the government he discover that the official responsible for representing his interests was on the board of Monsanto.
As far as "feeding the hungry". Monsantos seeds are genetically modified produce plants that don't have replantable seeds i.e. every year you have to buy your seeds from Monsanto. The 3rd world can't afford to use Monsanto's seeds and our subsidies of the corn industry make is hard for 3rd world farmers to make a living.
Extrapolate this out to the worst-case scenario and you've got the entire world buying corn seed from Monsanto because natural corn is extinct, through decades of unintentional pollination.
Schmeiser.
Basmati.
And lots and lots of others.
Really, Monsanto is evil, it has been proven way beyond any doubt. In cloudants position I'm not sure I would have taken the money but I would have never ever sent out this press release.