John,

>Several reasons. For one, if Office, Windows, and DevTools/Net are all separate, then we might have to contend with more incompatibilities than we do now. For two, all sorts of standards may no longer be standards.

I agree, but I think I'm even more concerned about the threat of judicially-ordered government oversight of future Windows OS features: Sorry, you can't release ASP+, etc. They're threatening to do this immediately while the appeals process runs its course.