I'm just guessing here but I think the point was just to draw people's attention to Paint.net. It really is a great little project. I've been impressed at how feature rich it is. As someone responsible for well over 100 classroom computers I can say it's an excellent tool for teaching basic photo editing.
Anyone thinking of buying Photoshop should check Paint.net out first to see if it has the features they need because in many cases it probably does (and it's free so there's no penalty).
Though it is only for Windows 7 so its appeal to the HN audience is probably limited
