On Friday Microsoft announced that it would not be shipping WinFS with its next-generation operating system Longhorn. This announcement can be viewed as either good or bad news. Good in the sense that Longhorn, for the first time has an official release date and bad for the announcement targeting software developers (as some of them would rather have WinFS included). In order to clear up some of the misunderstandings Bill Gates agreed to an interviewed by C|Net News.com earlier this week.
In the interview Bill Gates talks in further detail about the decision made to not include WinFS with Longhorn (final build). Adding that Microsoft will allow users to download WinFS (in beta form) when Longhorn ships. Also stating the final version of WinFS won"t be available until sometime in 2007 (same year Longhorn server ships). Always looking towards the future Bill Gates talked about future plans at Microsoft such as online music, off shoring, and other yet to be released Microsoft products.
The move to not ship Longhorn with WinFS will definitely help Microsoft in the long run (faster deployment of Longhorn). Especially since Longhorn has been one the most delayed products in Microsoft"s history. One thing is for sure, and that"s the relief that developers worldwide are expressing towards another announcement Microsoft made on Friday. An announcement that Microsoft will port the Avalon presentation layer, Indigo Web services infrastructure, and the some of the WinFX developer libraries to XP and 2003.