"People do not believe that the adoption of smart clients is going to take off," said an official with one independent software vendor backing the .Net platform, who requested anonymity.

"They don't believe that Microsoft publishes the right numbers about .Net adoption. As a .Net-centric company, any VC is concerned about Microsoft 'obsoleting' us by just incorporating our technology into their products. From an investor point of view, those are the biggest worries."

Meanwhile, Microsoft cites a 2004 Forrester Research report that said .Net was preferred by 56 percent to 44 percent over J2EE in North American firms as their primary development platform.

Microsoft maintains that .Net adoption is on track with the company's expectations.

In fact, at the Microsoft TechEd 2005 conference last month, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said: "I've got to start with .Net. We've been in market now five years with .Net. The primary development tool of choice for 43 percent of all developers is .Net based. Java is No. 2 at 35 percent. And frankly, Win32 non-.Net is No. 3. So there's really been an embrace amongst developers for .Net."

A developer with experience on the Microsoft platform working for a major software/services provider said he was concerned about Microsoft's .Net doublespeak.

"With .Net, Microsoft is a very heavy promoter, and they seem to be conveying a strong message that .Net is THE answer," the developer said. "It is the only development environment for Windows they talk about, support, write books about, etc. They speak as if it IS the right answer for everything, but are they an equally heavy internal user?

"They seem to speak with one voice, that .Net is the programming model, but is SQL server written in .Net? What about Word? Excel? Windows? All of MSN…? Many assumed that MS was 100 percent behind this platform and with Longhorn was rolling it out comprehensively. As you now know, this is not the case."

This article was originally published on eWEEK.com.