If history is anything to go by M$ pronouncements are best understood with a
copy of Sun Tzu's Art of War in the other hand.
Still, free software has to fight the incumbents on their ground at some
point and the .NET framework, (i.e. when M$ tried to expand to something not
hardware specific) was the right criteria for when to take them on. (Because
it can be implemented without reverse engineering the whole of W$).
All very messy and treacherous ground at best, but good luck to the Mono team
in providing a migration path for all that existing business custom software
in C# etc.
