I guess I base my opinions on the long term behavior of the company.

I worked at pinnacle in 1993. So they have been doing this for 10+ years.

It may change (as things in life tend to do) but I see them continuing this for some time. For instance at PDC they had a number of vendors (Macromedia comes to mind) on stage demonstrating using their XAML technology with them.

Microsoft is not an island.

Rodman