1. Criminally insane.  Reckless to a point considered, well, imprudent.   You lick the top of 9V batteries; you chew on tin-foil.  You cut your toe nails with a Leatherman.  You bank the farm on a technology that is still moving because pain is your friend.
2. People who may ship a product before .NET 3.5 ships.  .NET 3.5 has some new technologies that I am going to want to use.  Three that are immediately relevant are: new Active Directory bits, System.AddIn, and the goldern haired child, Linq.

These are bits that (esp. Linq) I want to bake in.  Right now I don’t want to code up bits that I know I am going to have to rip out soon in order to replace with the richer platform.

My ship dates are uncertain… if the product name is anything to go by Orcas is at least 6 mths away.  The real question in this post is how to mitigate the risk of being ready to ship before the platform is, and what to keep an eye on.

Please feel free to leave a comment or email me if you have clues for the above question

IIS 7 & Longhorn Beta 3 already has a Go Live license.  I believe them when they say it is good quality, and I believe them when they say it may still change.  Is a similar license something that we may see for .NET 3.5 as more betas or CTP’s become available?

Update:  Feb 27 2008 is looking like the launch date for SQL Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008 & Windows 2008.