The ServerSide.NET reports a worrying story that blog started conversation late last week, but caught my attention earlier this morning. The route of the article stems from this blog, as filed by a Microsoft VP announcing that almost a year after the GA drop, the first Service Pack for Visual Studio has been released to beta testing. The key takeaway from this article is that it appears that .NET 1.1 will no longer be supported on Microsoft Vista, which if today's C|NETs article is factual is only one release candidate short of a full GA release. Naturally this has triggered howls of protest from those already married to .NET 1.1 and with little intention of migrating to .NET 2.0 any time soon. Those hanging on for .NET 3.0 seem to be in a particularly precarious position... From the article itself, I tend to agree that this message has been poorly communicated, but having been in a position before, the task of motivating developers and application builders to a new platform is an intensely difficult thing to do correctly; but it's not impossible. Assuming the compatibility deltas are sufficiently limited, I think Microsoft can easily make developers feel less ill at ease by carefully documenting the features that may no longer work or function the same way. While I think dropping .NET 1.1 support may be premature, I understand Microsoft can't sustain it forever. Perhaps engaging with the broader community and building a consensus for a planned migration to .NET 2.0 and beyond might silence the loud voices; but this leaves those on the bleeding edge rather short changed. Achieving the balance between the two might be trickier than anyone fully realizes...