>Python was a non-starter in terms of UI: but with mobile UI now powered by the JS JIT (and shortly by the Pypy JIT), and a UI framework with a hundred developers and 10's of thousand of testers (Google Web Toolkit) able to be used with Python (through Pyjamas), there is now a viable alternative for business app development. And that alternative has stability. There will be at least two other alternatives using Python (Lianja; and QT Quick), so there's no issue of lock-in.

Compared to Windows UI alone python is still having more complexity to deploy and test - the price of complexity/many OS targets.
But now the added complexity IMHO is more than balanced by the benefit of run anywhere.

>Given that Mono is a requirement for .Net to succeed and is now in flux,

understatement of the day given that Miguel seemingly went to found his own [smaller] company...

>given that MS's mobile story is still weak, given that college students are moving to Macs at a rate far greater than the general population (and today's report that Mac use in corporations is growing beyond expectation), given that the results of MS's mis-steps are reflected in market cap, there's a real question whether .Net/MS represents the stability we all seek.

The stability is nowadays only in Word & Excel, Access is loosing ground IMHO
[albeit me reading today about IT loosing the battle against Excel&Access due to speed in getting business processes implemented]
Outlook is becoming the Notes of this century over here due to smartphone fragmentation - WP7/WinArm must fight here IMHO.

regards

thomas