Windows is going to have to play nice with other technologies. To an extent, this is already in place, with technologies such as WCF that support web standards

Windows is going to have to play nice with other technologies. To an extent, this is already in place, with technologies such as WCF that support web standards. I'm currently talking with a potential client about splitting out part of a Silverlight thick app to a platform-agnostic RESTful api to allow mobile and webapps. It's to Microsofts credit that this sort of thing is getting easier, though it's an uphill battle to sell such techniques to Microsoft development shops that still regard running a Citrix viewer to a Terminal Services farm, as a web-app.