Microsoft has finally gone public with a release date for Monad, the Windows Scripting Shell. At Day 3 of the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles, Microsoft Windows Server VP Bob Muglia announced Monad would go gold in 2006. Until recently, Monad was expected to be bundled into Windows Vista. Earlier this week, Microsoft made Beta 2 of Monad available for download. It's not clear as of yet if Monad will be bundled into Longhorn Server, which is due to ship in 2007.