Soma (VP of Dev Div, in simple one of the top guys working on next VS codenamed Orcas) announced few hours ago renaming WinFX to .NET Framewok 3.0. The announcement stated tat the rename has no technical effect on the components of WinFX/.NET Framework 3.0 components, just as you can see here:
It also stated another rename for InfoCard christened now “Windows CardSpace“ (WCS).
This is supposed to reduce developers' confusion about the versionning plan for WinFX/.NET 3.0. As you may expect, it didn't! Many guys commnted nigatively about this, and many are not fully understanding what impacts are there than just changing the installation directory to “%WINDIR%\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v3.0“. Many questions were told, and spread all over the web.
Jeason Zander (GM for the .NET Framework) wrote answers to the most common questions on that. Briefly, he indicated that .NET 3.0 depends on .NET 2.0, in the sense that it'll have a single installer which checks for .NET 2.0 and installs it if it's not already installed on the machine. It'll also use the .NET 2.0 CLR and compilers, therefore it will include neither C#3.0/VB.NET9.0 nor LINQ (which are left for Orcas, which means that we should expect another .NET framework upgrade when Orcas ships too and that Orcas is not shipping with the “new framework“??? Sounds so!). He also confirmed the installation directory and referenced another post he submitted earlier with thoughts on the versionning process.
For me, I knew that it'd mostly be a new framework since WinFX tour last month. I remember I then commented that it'd sort of be so late. I also used to tell (in small gatherings, not here) since last Aug. that I'm worried about VS2005, that it may die very soon after its release, just like VS.NET2002.. Now, it all sounds coming too quick, and we just have towait and see (as I presonally am not realy sure whether this is a bad thing or good).
Update: By the way, this is the .NET version shipping built into Windows VISTA (likely this Nov.), still, will be available for Windows XP and 2003.