Thanks C"est la Vie for sending this our way, This is the memo Bill Gates was supposed to have mailed around Microsoft addressing the concerns for security over features. This follows up on our report we posted yesterday (you can view that here)
Every few years I have sent out a memo talking about the highest priority for Microsoft. Two years ago, it was the kickoff of our .NET strategy. Before that, it was several memos about the importance of the Internet to our future and the ways we could make the Internet truly useful for people. Over the last year it has become clear that ensuring .NET is a platform for Trustworthy Computing is more important than any other part of our work. If we don"t do this, people simply won"t be willing -- or able -- to take advantage of all the other great work we do. Trustworthy Computing is the highest priority for all the work we are doing. We must lead the industry to a whole new level of Trustworthiness in computing.
When we started work on Microsoft .NET more than two years ago, we set a new direction for the company -- and articulated a new way to think about our software. Rather than developing standalone applications and Web sites, today we"re moving towards smart clients with rich user interfaces interacting with Web services. We"re driving the XML Web services standards so that systems from all vendors can share information, while working to make Windows the best client and server for this new era.
There is a lot of excitement about what this architecture makes possible. It allows the dreams about e-business that have been hyped over the last few years to become a reality. It enables people to collaborate in new ways, including how they read, communicate, share annotations, analyze information and meet.