>I think they don't need to proceed at all. Just negotiating the rules will show the strong and weak points of each tool.

If what you said is true, I wonder what Kevin percieve as an unfair weakness in .NET:

VFP has an unfair edge for making distributed applications?
VFP has an unfair edge for making smart-client applications?
VFP has an unfair edge for making database applications, even when using a third party product, like SQL server?

Or it might be that .NET weakness is for its incapability to do any of the beforementioned applications fast, or scalable, or reliable or robust or easier to maintain?

If you ask me, I do not think the initial conditions were unfair at all, if people come to VFP forums to tell us that we should move on from VFP to .NET, then .NET should be able to perform at least marginally the same as VFP in what VFP is used for, and not the other way around, after all nobody is telling them to use VFP instead of .NET for what they are doing.