Hi Mike,

You are entitled to your opinions just as I am to mine.

Rather than jump right into *THIS* thread I decided to let it go by. But a few things were said by a couple of folk which I felt needed addressing.

I saw Mr. Green's message the other day, and I personally have seen him logged into UT on at least one occasion several months back. But I would hazard the guess that this was Mr. Green's *first* message here. Perhaps he is actually starting to implement Gate's new 'policy' that MS has to get closer to its users?

By the way, I have never for a moment doubted Mr. Green's sincerity and intentions regarding VFP. But it looks to me like he is getting nowhere fast (and possibly somewhere very very slowly).

You certainly are correct when you say that I *don't* like the direction MS is taking VFP. We are getting virtually *no* improvements in what might be called the "tier-1" aspects of the language, we still with VFP 6 have an inoperative OUT PROCESS "tier-2" capability (maybe it can happen with lots of 'outside' software, but not by itself) and there is no way to know if the documentation generally and Help in particular will be vastly improved (as it needs to be) with VFP 6.

*I* am the most damaging thing going as far as VFP is concerned - come on, Mike. If that was anywhere near true then we are in far more trouble than anyone can imagine.

I happen to think that my criticism is *constructive* in nature and objective. You do not. And I acknowledge that most others on UT seem to side with you. That is the way life works,

As I said earlier, it is my intention to stay out of such debates, at least for several months *after* I have VFP 6. in hand myself. But sometimes conditions warrant a temporary change of 'policy', and this was simply one of those times.

Regards regardless,

Jim N


>> The many here who imply that they are in frequent contact with Robert Green are, to a person and in my opinion, mouthpieces for Mr. Green and stalwart defenders of MS and Mr. Green. Frankly, they sound so much like they are being paid by MS that, if they are not, they clearly are brown--nosing fror whatever advantage they can get.
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>I don't know if you include me in that group or not, but either way you are way off the mark. A lot of people, myself included, like the direction VFP as a product is headed in and are very, very pleased from a technical standpoint with the progress FoxPro has made from 2.6 to 3.0, to 5.0 to 6.0. The marketing and attention VFP is getting inside of MS still leaves a lot to be desired, but it is improving and at this point is at least beyond sucking.
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>>I can'r agree that there has been "significant" progress. We still see far to much of the rest of MS not even acknowledging the existence of VFP. This reported from seminar attendees and seen in advertisements.
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>There's still a lot of room for improvement, but there has been signicant improvement. I've yet to see a VS ad that doesn't include VFP and Tech Ed made more mention of VFP than any year in the past that I can recall. Of course, we tend to forget that VFP'ers don't really go to Tech Ed, so it's hard for MS to justify any VFP sessions there.
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>>VFP 6. virtually *ignored* all user "wish list" items in favour of other developments. I strongly suspect that those who were listened to for VFP 6 content were those very same people who imply close connection with Mr. Green. Further, I would guess that that "input" was more along the lines of Mr. Green's folks suggesting things and those folks simply saying 'yea, great idea'. Or possibly third party vendors got all the input. One thing is ctystal clear - regular developers got *NO* say in any of it!
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>For the most part MS doesn't listen to its customers for "wish list" items for any of its products. They have this grand "vision" of software and the enhancements made to each product tend to be heavily slanted towards fitting it into this grand vision. OTOH, you and others here fail to accept that many of the things you continue to ask for don't make business sense for MS. As far as 3rd party developers getting their enhancements in, you're right. Of course the 3rd party developers are also very responsible for continuing to move VFP forward and it makes a lot of business sense for MS to listen to them more. If SBT said we're moving to Delphi and taking our millions of users with us because VFP doesn't do something that Delphi does, it only makes sense for MS to make VFP do it.
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>However, do you think the changes in the MCD program in favor of FoxPro have anything to do with the postings here? Do you think Robert's "yes men" complained to him about how VFP was originally to be handled? I'm quite certain that Robert had a lot to do with the change and I'm quite certain some of the people that you're so critical of had a lot to do with it.
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>> There really is *no* evidence to support this.
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>Robert Green posted messages here today.
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>> The VFP award had little or nothing to do with MS.
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>That's is categorically untrue.
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>Frankly Jim, I think you're continued doom and gloom, your conscious choice to ignore facts and to make a negative out of anything positive related to VFP or at least discredit it, and the frequency with which you do it, is about the most damaging thing happening to VFP right now. You sound like someone who is standing in the walking line on a people mover at the airport who wonders why bags keep hitting him as people try to get around him.