> They have just decided that they are no longer going to do this for free.

Right, instead, they now charge the full cost of orchestration plus runner for just the orchestration part, making the basic runner free.

(Considering that compute for "self-hosted" runners is often also rented from some party that isn't Microsoft, this is arguably leveraging the market power in CI orchestration that is itself derived from their market power in code hosting to create/extend market power in compute for runners, which sounds like a potential violation of both the Sherman Act and the Clayton Act.)