Forking is always possible, but it was only <i>practical</i> because the community could plausibly claim to be able to put as much or more effort into building out their fork than Joyent could theirs.<p>Microsoft is a much, much, <i>much</i> bigger company than Joyent. If they decide they want to take things in their own direction, they can throw an awful lot of programmers at making that happen. Which would make standing up a fork that could plausibly claim to be at least as actively developed as Microsoft&#x27;s would be much more difficult.