Everyone has to do what they feel is right for their business. Open source, MSFT, Borland, whatever. None of them is going to commit to do what you want them to do. Examples abound from each: Borland ended life for some of their database products way before this. They just stopped them. I don't believe (though I haven't looked) that they have anything near a 10 year support policy on every product.

Open Source has some great, supported products and some that aren't. Getting the source code doesn't mean you can do anything longer term with it. It depends on the person. Most of them are run by people who make decisions that have to be lived by. Not everyone can modify the Linux kernel (which is a good thing, IMO), more people can modify some of the external parts.

Bottom line TANSTAAFL (There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch). I love open source stuff. I love MSFT stuff. I work in a group that brings open source within MSFT. Who would'a thunk it? I work regularly with folks like Jim Newkirk who started a great Open Source project called NUNIT (the father of .NET Unit Test frameworks) who is now here. I've also worked with Jim Hugunin, the creator of IronPython, David Simmons who created a number of languages including a cool version of Smalltalk called S+, and Erik Meijer, the father of Haskell. They all work here and deeply understand open source as well. It's just not black or white.

yag

>VFP is not an strategic, so all those window, ms-Office,Sql Servers sales we got with these products are nothing. My customers buy windows, offices and Sql Servers because we tell them. From now on it's not a bad Idea to recomends Linux, OpenOffice, My sql. I'm really thingking on doing that.
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>>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
>>
>>>Alan,
>>>
>>>Today I have been reading all (I hope) comments in all threads about MS's announcement to stop development after Sedna.
>>>
>>>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.
>>>
>>>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?
>>>
>>>I belong to those who would appreciate a more open explanation of the why of the decision.
>>>
>>>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.