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>I agree. And yet, I have never seen Ken post so frequently about the topic of VFP's "future" as he has over the past month. Ken's been dropping hints all over the place. I've been tracking Ken's recent posts (UT, Profox, MSDN forum) and I would be surprised if his June newsletter includes anything new beyond what he's already posted.

Microsoft has said for years that .Net is strategic and VFP isn't and there has been a big push for VFP developers to look at .Net. Adding more interop capabilities is good and even if the end is coming, VFP apps should run just fine on Longhorn and take advantage of many of the new technologies coming. Just as there is still development today using Fox 2.x, there will stil be development in VFP. In fact, there is a good parallel there. Many people did not move from Fox2.x to VFP for many reasons. There will be people that don't move from VFP to .Net (or Java or Open Source, etc) and there will be people that do move. The good thing is, it sounds like MS is doing things to allow those who don't move a way to use new stuff like Avalon.

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>My take (clearly speculation and based on my interpretation of Ken's comments/hints) is that there will be no VFP 10. VFP will move off the active development and enhancement path and on to life support. The "bright spot" (cough) in all this is the pitch of more .NET interop and a soft landing with the promise of support until 2014.

I've made a living with VFP, but if it does go on to life support, so what? Many products have done that over the years.

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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.

Are you saying that should the end be coming that you will totally give up on MS and go the way of Whil Hentzen? Good will and the small number of customers means nothing to MS. I've worked for several large corporations and their priorities have always been the same: 1) share holders, 2) customers, 3) employees.

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>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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>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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>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.

MS TOTALLY understands the Fox community and has been trying to copy it for some time. There are several MS executives that are former Fox people and even more employees and managers that once either worked on the Fox team or with Fox.

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