Gerald,

>But the general tone of this entire thread (no passion, no fight, no name calling) seems to indicate that a large part of the lurkers share this point of view.

Just because someone has not posted a response yet should not mean that they share the same interpretation of "black box = death." :-)

>Or they simply adopt a wait and see position?

I'm watching and listening (and have been for months), and the events seem to playing out as I have expected related to whether there will be a version called 10.0. However, I am delighted to hear that the plans for future enhancements to VFP will be significant (beyond a service pack) and will relate directly to how VFP may be able to interoperate with other technologies (including new features in Longhorn like Avalon).

The usefulness of VFP many years from now will depend on many factors, but it sounds like the VFP Team is trying to provide a path of enhancement that will help us work around a few of the upcoming roadblocks as gracefully as possible without hitting a complete deadend any time soon.

I expect to be running VFP code for a long, long time, and look forward to hearing more details on June 1.