[jyaker]

I agree with you on the Azure vs "nice things". I also think their long-term strategy doesn't rest with the .NET framework.

However, I think they know that if they completely abandoned the .NET framework, there would be a community of very upset devs that have spent their entire careers investing in Microsoft. Instead, they're doing a slow withdrawal and "giving it to the community".

I think that in the long term, they're going to be focusing more on Sharepoint, SQL Server, and Azure; less on .NET. That's just IMHO.