>Hi Peter
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>I expect in either case a company would weigh up the pros and cons of their individual situation and make the most cost effective decision.

The most cost effective decision may have been modernizing the existing application. Now they are forced to spend a lot of money for entire replacement and without a guarantee for success. (Note: This is a hypothetical case. I'm not (necessarilly) referring here to a case I know of.)

Perhaps they decided last year to modernize and now come to the conclusion that the project must be stopped. Talking about cost effective decision making... (Note: This is a hypothetical etc.)


>That may be to change course on an existing development or carry on as before. I'm not banging the Microsoft drum but they seem to have given pretty long notice of their intention to withdraw a product and I can't see why people should feel so let down.

I can't remember 'they seem to have given pretty long notice of their intention to withdraw' vfp. It were only 'signs on the wall', not clear statements.


>Microsoft aren't some sort of public institution, they are a business and thats the end of it.

This is actually an interesting one. I belong to the camp of people who are of opinion that companies too have a social responsibility. But you may be right that we cannot possibly force companies to take this kind of responsibility. If that's really the end conclusion, then the consequence is that we should no longer use their software as the basis of our information technology.

In the Netherlands several cities are investigating the use of products like OpenOffice, in order to become independent from MS. I can understand those attempts even more now.


I could probably justify a complaint if I'd bought VFP9 last week and they had pulled the plug this week with no ongoing support but thats not the case.
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>Nick
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>>>If those companies can expect their applications to run and be supported for another 8 to 10 years I don't see why they should have a problem. All systems have a life cycle of redevelopment and moving to a new set of tools shouldn't be a huge hurdle over such a long timeframe.
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>>Suppose a company has to decide THIS YEAR to either modernize its in-house-built VFP7 application that handles complex rules, or to choose for replacement with a standard application that only claims it can handle those complex rules...
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>>What do you think will be the influence of the announcement made this week?
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>>And how do you think developers and decision makers will currently feel if they had that decision to make LAST YEAR and chose to continue using VFP?
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>>>VFP was nothing like earlier versions of foxpro so required as much change as going for VFP to whatever else.
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>>>My main sadness is that th VFP community that I see here always seems very helpful and supportive and I don't know if that will carry on in the long run. I think that change is really been happening for some time, there is still excellent help here but I don't think there is as much as there used to be .
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>>>Nick
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>>>>There are quite many companies that market complex, in-house built with vfp, off-the-shelf products. E.g., two of the leading Dutch bookkeeping packages are entirely written in vfp.
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>>>>These companies now have a really serious problem. The MS decision to stop with further develpment of vfp forces them to invest heavilly in completely rewriting each of their complex packages. Has this problem already got the focussed attention of us all here?
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>>>>For example, does law permit MS to stop further development? Isn't there a case when such a company goes to court, because it feels misled by MS? Afterall, MS has claimed many times in the past that vfp would not gonna die. Those promisses have led decision makers in those companies to decide that it was okay to use vfp as the primary programming language for the development of their complex packages. And now they feel forced to switch to another language, not in 8 years, but starting this year already.
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>>>>And how about those of us who have successfully tried to convince customers that they can extend or modernize an existing vfp application, making it unnecessary for that customer to seek for a complete replacement. Those customers will gonna feel misled, by US, rather than by MS. And why did we make those promisses? Because there were no clear signs in the past that MS would gonna drop further development.