joelthelion

nice one.. I worked at msft for 5 years. about 5 years ago.. We were starting the longhorn death march and there was so much BS about how great is was going to be and how fast we would get it done.. New relational file system, 3D UI, and all built on the new managed code framework.. 
A couple years had already gone by since I stood on the lawn at the XP ship party with 7,000 other geeks in the Windows team (aug 21 2001).. And I had an idea that I started to socialize.. It was pretty basic.. Branch the Windows source.  Let something like 500-1000 developers and PMs quit their jobs and join a self organized team.. i.e. keep their paychecks but with no responsibility other than working on anything they wanted in the new branch.. Taking ownership for their own projects... organizing how source would be managed.. pitching their projects to other devs and teams.. Give them 2 years and see what they produce.. 
My bet was this chaotic mess would yield far more innovation, user value, and results than the monstrously hopeless top down clusterfuck that became vista..
It will never happen.. 

Its a good thing he can write code cause I had dinner with the guy a few years back (friend of a friend type of event) & the guy can't carry a conversation.