Chris Gomez

What I loved about this was peeking over the shoulder of two developers working hard on ASP.NET.  It doesn't matter that it was more candid and had mistakes and issues.  You can see a lot of thought is going into this work.  It's not fluff and it's being driven by these developers.  It really breaks down some of the misguided idea that it's a monolithic organization moving in lockstep.

If IIS Express is being designed to make our developing lives easier, then I could care less about separating it.  Having to install WebMatrix is no big deal if the roadmap says, "You use this to transition to deployment on IIS".

However, if the goal here is to create an alternative to IIS for small deployments, perhaps on non-developer boxes like a Server install or even just Win7 Home Premium install or something, then sure, separate it.  I wouldn't want to have to install WebMatrix on a production server.

But right now, I can't see the roadmap that says "I want IIS Express on a production server."  I can see a roadmap that says, "I want to get a simple web server up now for debugging or for a demo."  And in that case, wouldn't the dev tools be on the box?

If it's just because you don't like WebMatrix, that's a fine opinion... I just don't care about having to install it.  Heck, it's far more mature than people think and ready to use in many small scenarios.