>>> Seems to me that Microsoft is more of a "show me the money" company than
>>> a "make developers happy and engender loyalty" type company.
>
>You know, I think this statement is unfair in the extreme. No offense, but if it was just about the money, then FoxPro would have been cancelled shortly after it served the purpose of killing Borland (at the time). And that was when? Close to a decade ago? Many products in this industry don't have a decade of total life span.
>
>FoxPro has been an amazing ride, but like all products, it has a life-span and eventually goes away. I think it started in 84, and it will be supported through 2015. That is more than 30 years. (And surely, it won't just disappear then either). Not bad at all.
>
>And clearly, we have to thank Microsoft as well as a group of very dedicated individuals for keeping going much longer than any business reason would have dictated.
>
>Markus

I think the main reason MS kept VFP alive is that the US department of defense depended on VFP for the core of its logistic application. Maybe what killed VFP is that the US-DOD found an alternative. If so, I'd like to know what it was.