>they said they had consultants working to develop the underlying OS itself
I think a lot of people make the assumption that just because you're running windows you're not going to run into any road blocks that require hiring developers to extend this or that or create a plugin here or there. Of course you can't extend the windows OS, and why would you want to? Probably to optimize something. Why would you want to optimize something? Probably to make things run better. Why would you want things to run better? Probably because it saves money. So for all we know the development on LiMux may have been what saved them the money.
I think a lot of people make the assumption that just because you're running windows you're not going to run into any road blocks that require hiring developers to extend this or that or create a plugin here or there. Of course you can't extend the windows OS, and why would you want to? Probably to optimize something. Why would you want to optimize something? Probably to make things run better. Why would you want things to run better? Probably because it saves money. So for all we know the development on LiMux may have been what saved them the money.