Alan,

Thanks for replying so quick. The HOW and WHEN of the decision is now clear to me. However, what I completely miss in your reply is the WHY of the decision. What are the REASONS. I need some arguments. There will be moments that a prospect or client comes to me and says: "Hey, I've heard VFP is dead!". What can I say then? "Yeah, they no longer see it as a strategic product". I'd really like to have more, and more impressive, arguments ready.

>Not sure how to answer this. We've said for years that VFP wasn't a strategic product. We said that one reason I owned VS Data was to get the VS team (and particularly VB) understand VFP and vice verse. We said that we were working on LINQ as well as Sedna.
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>That said, there was no decision to end VFP core enhancements until fairly recently. As part of that discussion, we decided to open source Sedna at no charge. After that decision, the next question was "should we tell folks"? Note that not many companies do that so openly. The team's reaction was "of course we should" and we stuck to that thru a number of discussions. The next question was when and how do we tell people? With the MVP summit coming up, I felt that telling them in person was the right thing to do. So we hurried to get everything in place (and there's a lot to get in place so we can answer questions about support, the MVP program, etc.). Basically, I've been working over 100 hours a week the past few weeks. I give props to my current manager, Sandy, for letting me put aside much of my regular work to focus on this for a few weeks less than a month before we release four products that I've architected to beta.
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>I hope that helps.
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>yag
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>>Alan,
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>>Today I have been reading all (I hope) comments in all threads about MS's announcement to stop development after Sedna.
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>>I have read many arguments of those who 'dislike' that decision and of those who 'accept' it. They have provided me several arguments I can use when talking about this to colleagues and customers. However, the arguments of MS have not become clear to me. Several here have shown interest in those arguments, others have stated that a company has no obligation to provide the real argumentation for their business decisions.
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>>In the past, on several occasions, MS representatives here have stated that it is not the habit of MS to tell the community about their long term plans. That was esp. the answer whenever someone asked about the chances of a 10th vfp version. Some developers, customers and decision makers have interpreted such wordings as inclining that no next version would gonna see the daylight. Others came to the opposite conclusion (for instance, me). As it turns out now, the pessimists were the realists after all. Have people like me been fooled for a long time by MS, or has it really been a truly recent decision?
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>>I belong to those who would appreciate a more open explanation of the why of the decision.
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>>Your answer will gonna be vital to my decision to either stay on board, or to abandon this ship as soon as possible. I'm kind of in a shock, really. And if I abandon this ship, it may well be that the next ship isn't one of MS, depending on your answer.