From Microsoft Watch: It was almost exactly a year ago that Microsoft revealed that it had decided to rip WinFS, the next-generation Windows file system, out of Longhorn client and server in order to ship the products in a more timely fashion. For the past year, Microsoft has declined to talk about WinFS at all. But we hear the moratorium might soon end. It sounds like WinFS is moving ahead and developers might even see the first WinFS beta bits as early as the upcoming Professional Developers Conference. Yeah, we're surprised, too. But that's what our sources are saying. For now, Microsoft's still not talking.