Absolutely. MS is full of architecture astronauts (along with super smart people, who do useful things - but the arch people are in charge) that sit around and

Absolutely. MS is full of architecture astronauts (along with super smart people, who do useful things - but the arch people are in charge) that sit around and contemplate all these bizarre use cases for things that no one actually has. Then, since MSFT believes they have little/no competition in the space, they spend years developing this grand vision and dumping it on their customers, who then attempt to figure out what parts of this vision are useful and what parts are bunk. Microsoft then looks at what happens, sees the work arounds, and rewrites the whole thing again to accommodate not only those use cases, but a whole host of other imagined ones, too. Lather, rinse, repeat. Open source generally doesn't have this problem, as a) some developer was scratching their own itch, so the problem is real b) doesn't have unlimited time and budget, so they have to keep it small and evolve, and c) relies on developer's contributions, so it has to be marketable. Open source : Microsoft :: Lean startup : Waterfall