Interesting point Jim,

It might be more effort/problem for MS to end develpoment on VFP than they have put into the product lately.

Bob

>>>MS has finally come out and officially stated what we all knew, VFP9 is the last official version.
>>>
>>>http://blogs.msdn.com/yag/archive/2007/03/13/message-to-the-vfp-community.aspx
>>
>>I really do not understand why some people are surprised? It is simply a business decision.
>
>We've been conditioned to accept 'a simple business decision' far too easily.
>Possibly to prove that we too are good and smart businessmen. For some it's simply that Microsoft can do no wrong, so even if they don't understand the decision it *must* be a good one.
>
>Microsoft, with very negligible cost (compared to other developments they do), could well have continued to improve VFP for many many more years yet. They probably waste more money in their mailroom than they actually spend on VFP. They could probably save more money just changing the quality of their toilet paper supplies a notch downward.
>When you're talking 10 or less people out of a population of 10s of thousands of employees, VFP is less than a bacteria, comparatively.
>VFP has been instrumental in keeping Linux (and others) out of many many shops for a good long while. And it would only continue to do so if it was still actively developed.
>VFP is cheap enough that smaller businesses - and probably most businesses in poorer countries - would continue to use VFP-based applications for many many yers to come.
>
>Microsoft knows that it has several tens of thousands of developers out there who use VFP to make a living. Microsoft knows that it has hundreds of thousands of busineses out there who use VFP for their bread-and-butter applications.
>
>Yes, we all knew it was coming. But there was faint hope when Microsoft continued to say they didn't talk about next versions. Hope that a smart business decision would be made rather than this.
>
>There is NOTHING "smart" about this business decision. It will only hurt developers, users and Microsoft itself.
>
>It's true that VFP is no damned good for Microsoft's "cloud" objective. But there are other infinitely more challenging issues for their "cloud" than little old VFP.