Dave Winer blogs his reaction to the Allchin memo:
BTW, “Hard core” means “death march.” It’s the same trap that Apple fell into with Copland.
The devteam was always in death march mode, when one impossible ship
date was missed, they scheduled it for another impossible date. When
you ask a Microsoft person to say what Longhorn is supposed to do, you
get rambly hand-wavy words that mean nothing. A product with a purpose
has a two-sentence description that gets everyone so excited they can’t
wait. Longhorn isn’t designed to solve anyone’s problems. I think they
all know it, but they can’t say it out loud because they’ve all drunk
the Kool Aid on this.
The devteam was always in death march mode, when one impossible ship
date was missed, they scheduled it for another impossible date. When
you ask a Microsoft person to say what Longhorn is supposed to do, you
get rambly hand-wavy words that mean nothing. A product with a purpose
has a two-sentence description that gets everyone so excited they can’t
wait. Longhorn isn’t designed to solve anyone’s problems. I think they
all know it, but they can’t say it out loud because they’ve all drunk
the Kool Aid on this.
Link via Scripting News