[zyphlar]

Microsoft has tried time and time again (with their various .Net initiatives explicitly!) to lock the web into their platforms, because they saw back then (and are blinded by the fact now) that the web is the new platform and pretty soon nobody is going to need Windows anymore.

Just look at Silverlight. Who wants to install that on their Apple or Google device? Flash is bad enough. And yet it's what Microsoft wants you to use to make your ASP.Net app have fancy graphs. L-L-L-lock-in.

Even iOS and Android wouldn't be as powerful as they are had fully-interoperable webservices not come first (killer apps like Gmail, Twitter, Facebook, and Dropbox are webservices first, apps second. You can't compete with them by making an app first, they're platform agnostic.)

So yeah, given the chance Microsoft will try and make Windows 7 running IE accessing a Windows 2008 Server running a .Net app on IIS with a MS-SQL Enterprise backend the only option. It's a testament to the fierceness of the FOSS and LAMP communities that Microsoft is losing this battle (and the world is better off because of it.)