>As a customer, I have a very hard time understanding how the revenue earned from VFP _AND_ the goodwill and ancilatory revenue generated by VFP applications (OS, Office and server sales) don't justify the continued development (vs. life support) of this product, especially given the incredibly tiny team and I assume minimal overhead asssociated with VFP?
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The revenue from VFP is a small, almost inconsequential blip on MS's radar screen. If they discontinued VFP tomorrow, they would never even feel the change. Support for xBase as a whole has been declining for years.

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>Speaking of goodwill, one of the intangible values of VFP is its unique sense of community. How many MS products have developed such a loyal, passionate, perhaps even fanatical following? You can't buy this level of enthusiasm (even with billions in marketing) or bully customers into loving a product - you have to earn it the old fashioned way. Clearly the VFP product has earned its following.
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What? How about the communities around VB, ASP, .Net, DotNetNuke, Community Server, PHP, Apache, Linux, etc. To say that this is a unique phenomena with VFP is disingenuous at best.


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I'm dismayed that Microsoft management sees no value in its passionate VFP community. Perhaps >this is another indication of how far out of touch Microsoft is with its customer base? Where >is the passion? When was the last time you heard customers getting excited about the next >>release of a MS operating system or new version of Office? IMO, the last time you saw this >type of customer passion (outside of the VFP community) was the release of Windows 95. Flash >forward 10 years and billions of dollars and still no real, genuine excitement.
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They have other communities with passion also. Again it is a function of revenue. MS is a company out for a profit. When VFP becomes a drag against that profit, it will cease to be, and I'm afraid, we are close to that point already.


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>A plea to Microsoft: Reach out and embrace your VFP customers. Take our passion and loyalty >and help extend it to your other products. Learn from us. Our passion and loyalty is strong >but brittle. Don't throw away one of your true gems!!!
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Again, you are wrongly surmising that only VFP'ers have passion and loyalty. Again there are many products with an equal following that generate 10's, 100's or even 1,000's times the revenue that VFP generates.