Lies, Damn lies, and statistics

It seems Dr. Richard Grimes is at it again.  He published this whitepaper asserting that Microsoft is running from .NET with it's Vista release.

Of course, it produced the expected result on slashdot.

OK, repeat after me:  "It's an operating system, not an application." 

I could join in the mudslinging, and say that Sun must be running from Java because Solaris is built in Java. But I'd be wrong, so we'll just leave that as an analogy.

Instead, I'll point out numerous locations where Microsoft is investing in .NET to produce important (or even flagship) products:

- Visual Studio 2005: 7.5 million lines
- SQL Server 2005: 3 million lines
- BizTalk Server: 2 million lines
- Visual Studio Team System: 1.7 million lines

These products have hundreds of thousands of lines of managed code:

- Windows Presentation Foundation (Indigo): 900K lines
- Windows Sharepoint Services: 750K lines
- Expression Interactive Designer: 250K lines  
- Sharepoint Portal Server: 200K lines
- Content Management Server: 100K lines

So, there's no doubt that Microsoft is investing in .NET, both for their own customers, and in their own products.

Dr. Grimes' facts on managed code delivered with Vista may be right, but his conclusions are just plain wrong.