F# to be productized

(Via Secret Geek)

Now, I don’t really know what this means. Does it mean that MS is going to guarantee some kind of backwards compatibility and offer official stable/supported releases?

Somasegar offers scant details on the productization of F# itself, but indicates

We will be partnering with Don Syme and others in Microsoft Research to fully integrate the F# language into Visual Studio and continue innovating and evolving F#.

It is said that having too large an adoption base for a new programming language/platform can actually stifle further evolution, as considerations about preserving backward compatibility (even bugs) become far more important than improving the language. I would have been happier to see that Microsoft cultivate the F# community over time organically, rather than go for the big product push.