.NET Forever

When you say "retiring", do you really mean "retrying"? Because that's more accurately the case, and the WinFX team is hijacking the .NET version namespace to aggrandize their own contribution. While their contribution is significant, it's completely idiotic to combine the .NET 2.0 runtime, the 2.0 Framework, the 2.0 toosl (VS 2005), and then add the WinFX assemblies and magically you have .NET 3.0.

Absolutely idiocy.

Jason Zander's WebLog : WinFX 3.0 Rename...

I not only 2nd, but third and fourth Dennis' comments. As if things weren't contrived and convoluted enough already. Now there's the quagmyre ( or is it guagmire ) of all the WinFX assemblies being all goobly-gooked and intertwined with System.Windows.Forms. When is a WPF not a WPF application ? When the WPF part is hosted in a Windows .Net Forms application. Geeze Louise, I haven't heard of anything so ridiculous since DCom became "all the rage".

Can SOMEONE finally make up their minds at MS anymore ? We apparently already have our answer to THAT question

Dennis,

There's no "WinFX team" per se.

The .NET Framework contains code that comes from a variety of teams that span (at least) Windows Client, Windows Server, SQL, and DevDiv.

More specifically, Indigo, ASMX, and .NET Remoting are all built and owned by the exact same team (under OmriG). We've often said Indigo is "V.next" of both of these technologies, so it seemed odd that marketing invented a new brand for what for us was effectively a V.next effort (albeit a pretty significant V.next).

More broadly, there was never a "WinFX team" any more than there is a ".NET team" - rather, several teams across the company collaborate to build what hopefully feels like a coherent developer platform.

This was true since day 1 of .NET.

Personally, I'm thrilled that we're not using a distinct brand. Whether we should have used "3.0", "2.1", or "2.5" for this release is a minor point in my book.

DB

Marcelo,

They're all .NET applications now :-)

Seriously, the question is no different than "when is a .NET app also an ADO.NET app?"

DB

So the DNA/ActiveX technology should be .NET -1. MFC becomes .NET -2. DOS is like .NET -10.

Mike,

As you may or may not know, things actually almost wound up the other way around.

The first disclosure of the CLR in 1997 referred to it as "the COM+ runtime" (http://www.microsoft.com/msj/1297/complus2/complus2.aspx).

DB

Don... I would like to believe in the retirement of ActiveX is close to us. However every bit you download from ms.com (not web content) is packaged in an ActiveX package, I'm talking about WindowsUpdate, WindowsGenuineTool and so on...

Since Soma announced the official rename from WinFx to .Net 3.0 everyone is talking about it here, here...

Don,
Wasn't one of the reasons for not naming it COMX,

That COM3 already had meaning.

.NET - DOTNET
C# - CSharp

it does seem as if Microsoft did not give a lot of thought to Search when doing their naming.