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>Unfortunately, for me, a statement of no more new versions is, in my opinion, a death sentence. And a big mistake in lost good will on Microsoft's part.


It's all in the way those news will appear. They will probably try to make those announcements look like what will replace a new major version (VFP10) will be even better than releasing a new major version.

You know how MS can make things look good <g>.

>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.
>
>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.


Perhaps the MS business is not as fun as it used to be. Once upon a time (many years ago) they only had to release software that did a good enough job to get everybody excited. So people bought their software because everybody said how cool, good, simple... those were. And also there were not that many alternatives.

So because of that MS made a lot of money whatever they did. So instead of concentrating on making money they could listen to their customers. Because they made a lof of money anyway.

Stock price was high. Viruses, spam, security was not as big an issue as it is today. So everybody, everything could'nt be better. That's where all those guys made their billions.

But why things are not like they were? because it looks like all the problems happened at the same time. People saying that there are way too many bugs in MS products. That equals to bad publicity for MS. There are also security issues. That equals to more bad publicity for MS. Bad publicity = stock price falling. Stock prices falling = billionaires losing lots of money.

And like everybody knows if there's a thing that stockholders don't like it's to lose money. So perhaps MS philosophy changed. Once upon a time it could've been "We listen to our customers" perhaps now it could be "We listen to our stockholders" <vbg>


>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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>Un-cage your Fox! Let the Fox live!


They could've made the FOX a huge developper tool. Instead they chose to take parts from it to put in other developer tools. The main reason probably because the Fox did'nt bring lotsa money like a combination of VB or VB.Net or whatever other tool mixed with SQL-Server.

The main reason many have given to prefer SQL-Server over the Fox is because the Fox tables are not reliable. Too bad there's not someone within MS that is not bright enough to solve that problem <vbg>.

So all the decisions surrounding the Fox are related to the money that the Fox is taking away from their other tools. But MS probably does'nt really want to p*ss off too many persons too fast. So for those of us not bright enough to have jumped in the .net bandwagon yet, they'll get us there slowly...

First plug to pull off will probably be officialized in june. There won't be a VFP10.