Two comments. First, who cares? Microsoft can do whatever they want.
Second, this is the Service Pack 2 Beta newsgroup. This means it is a
place to report bugs, ask SP2 Beta related questions, etc., not ask for
comments on a stupid statment speculating Microsoft's future plans for
an OS.
If Microsoft really wants to, they can get Longhorn ready when they said
they were going to. The question is how much will it cost them.