I want to invoke the right of parley, or: how MS missed an opportunity with SP2

The title of this article was insprired by the excellent article on Daring Fireball XP SP2 is absolutely an essential upgrade, everyone should install it, even though there might be some problems with it (more on that later). The opportunity MS missed was shipping the .NET Framework standard with SP2. The redistributable installer is on the SP2 CD, but the SP2 installer does not install the framework. As a developer, I have given up all hope of seeing Windows Forms as a viable deployment platform. This was the last best opportunity to push these bits onto the client platform and they just didn't do it. I would love to know why we ended up in this mess. And I just don't buy the arguement that this is because of the legal stuff with the DOJ, Europe, and Japan. If that were true, why does SP2 update my media player to Windows Media Player 9? A sad day for .NET developers. The platform may rock, but if I can't depend on the bits being on the client, and I want to minimize my installers size, I am stuck in VB6 or Win32 for client apps...*sigh*