For those of you who are following the back ported Membership API I have some news.  Tonight I had opportunity to visit with Scott Guthrie and I asked him when we might see the download return.  He indicated that it was likely not to return.  Currently DotNetNuke and Community Server are both licensed to use it.  Others can request it and will likely be granted license, but the issues around supporting it are apparently causing Microsoft to hold back on releasing it openly.  For those wanting to check it out you probably should plan on following the steps I outlined when it first appeared.  I will leave the latest changes in implementation to you for now.  Those who really want it will need to find a way to request it from the ASP.NET team.

Scott Guthrie, here is a thought.  Perhaps you could give it to a 3rd party like myself or someone else who could maintain it in an open source model.  That would free Microsoft from supporting it and still allow the community to begin writing against it to prepare for .NET 2.0 and gain its advantages today.  I would be happy to rebuild it under a new namespace to remove Microsoft from responsibility for support and updates.

A couple other news items from Scott.  Sharepoint 2006 or whatever the next version is called will support forms authentication for Internet sites.  He has updated his VirtualPathProvider sample code for Beta 2 of VS 2005.  See the download for the March 20, 2005 talk from VS Connections in Orlando.