Seeking to promote "an open and honest, and two-way, discussion about how we balance all of these interests and deliver software on the scale of Windows," Microsoft has launched the Engineering Windows 7 blog, hosted by two senior Microsoft stars, Jon DeVaan and Steven Sinofsky.

A two-way discussion probably doesn't mean they are taking orders for features, but they will listen to concerns of the technical community and respond to them publicly. They specifically ask for topic suggestions (I've already sent one in). Not too many years ago this sort of thing was unthinkable at Microsoft, but it's been moving steadily in this direction.