I think that the recently announced NuGet (http://nuget.codeplex.com/) will be a big boost to the .net community. Having the global library repository like Perl's CPAN will be huge in bringing the community together. More users of libraries will mean more improvements too them.

It also seems like the existence and success of sites like codeplex and stackoverflow negates his thesis.

Was glad to read that he was leaving for purely non-technical reasons. I bet he'll be back someday.