I hope that Eric’s not holding his breath on this one. Because I think that I’ve got a better chance of seeing a cross platform application server from Microsoft than he has of seeing a cross platform client.

I want a cross-platform story for managed code. Any story… Please make C# awesome. It is probably the last language I will ever use.

Microsoft will never own the server the way it owns the desktop. Corporations are already uneasy about the desktop monopoly, they’re not about to give Microsoft that same power on the server. And the existence of Linux acts as a soft cap on the cost of a Server OS. But there is money to be made with an application server. And a cross platform app server would build trust that the app server has a clean separation from the Windows OS.

While Linux has a solid foothold on the server, it has been a non-starter on the desktop. And the lack of software is a big part of what has been holding it back. Provide ISV’s with an easy path to migrate Windows applications to Linux and the desktop market would suddenly become much more interesting.