This is always how it has been with Microsoft. They control the developer toolchain 100%. They have gone out of their way in years past to burn other developm

This is always how it has been with Microsoft. They control the developer toolchain 100%. They have gone out of their way in years past to burn other development tools (they pretty much shut Delphi out of the market with a last-minute change in one of their specs, back in the day - was it COM?) The advantage of this is that you get some really nice APIs - the gulf between the .NET and Java core library architectures is huge - but the drawbacks are too many to name: forced obsolescence every few years, continual new experimental technologies forced on developers using the Embrace, Extend, Extinguish paradigm, and you really don't have the time or energy to try to work outside this model. You are either in the community or out of it. This is showing signs of change with the opening of the .NET toolchain, but I'll be curious to see if there is a point at which some of it actually starts to be community driven. Miguel de Icaza cannot shoulder the entire movement by himself;)