The newly (and most likely temporarily) facially hirsuite Dave, the ever-analytical Graham and I spent an intimate evening a few weeks ago with 20 of our closest MOSSIG friends discussing "The Platform".  Tim has posted a podcast (and summary) of this session, which I have to admit I haven't had a chance to listen to yet...  but from memory it was one of those very interesting chats where everyone is either in vehemant agreement or arguing bitterly about semantcs :)

FWIW - I still maintain (looking furtively at CodeJedi here) that the .NET framework, as well as the SCSF, SSF and the WCSF are all platforms by my admittedly arbitrary definition: "any code artifact that accelerates your time to value is a platform".

Thanks Tim for giving us an opportunity to be part of a really interesting discussion!