14 DAY TRIAL // According to Paul Thurrott, the Microsoft connoisseur, Microsoft plans to publish the beta 1 of Longhorn on July 27.
The test teams are required to complete testing by July 22, but they need to achieve the "0 active bug" designation in order to ship Beta 1.
On Monday, there were 123 active bugs in the Beta 1 fork. That number had dropped to 86 by Tuesday.
Paul Thurrott reports that Microsoft recently forked the Longhorn build process to segregate Beta 1 code check-ins from the post-Beta 1 code path.
Recent leaks of Longhorn builds are from the Beta 2 code path, but the Microsoft expects them to be quickly eclipsed by the Beta 1 code base as Microsoft makes that milestone widely available.