RIP: WinFS Killed By Microsoft

In a typically sandwitched message format (good news-bad news-good news), Quentin Clark from Microsoft announces the death of WinFS filesystem in WinFS blog.

“we are not pursuing a separate delivery of WinFS, including the previously planned Beta 2 release. With most of our effort now working towards productizing mature aspects of the WinFS project into SQL and ADO.NET, we do not need to deliver a separate WinFS offering. ” link

Kevin Daly made an interesting comment:
“I’m struck by a curious symmetry in this…I remember the announcement that ObjectSpaces was being rolled into WinFS (I was not exactly chuffed), and this seems almost like the converse (if you take the view that the Entities support in ADO.NET and LINQ have between them picked up where ObjectSpaces left off). ”

I think it is a major setback for Microsoft Vista users not only in terms of functionality but also in terms of vision. Will Linux seize the opportunity? I doubt it.