Thanks for that Randy. This one gets saved in the VFP folder. (Hey, you're already in there with your last masterpiece <g>: Message #1045923)

>It was refreshing to catch up with some friends last week at a special dinner with the Fox MVPs. Unfortunately, I have not been that close to the goings-on in the Fox world since my departure. And I no longer have VFP automatically launch when I boot-up Windows :). Sadly, much of my time these days has been spent dealing with numerous Vista problems. It’s gotten to the point where folks from MS Tech Support have given up and their only response to me now is to reformat my HD and reinstall Vista. To all you folks thinking about the “Vista Upgrade option”, don’t! Do yourself a favor and start out with a freshly reformatted clean HD.
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>So people at the summit told me that I look great these days. At first, I was a bit surprised to hear this being that I have put on about 10 pounds, but I guess much of it is due to a much less stressful lifestyle no longer being a member of the Fox team. After taking some serious time off and some wonderful trips last year, I am back playing around with some minor web development efforts these days. I dusted off an old copy of Visual Studio and am now doing some ASP.NET web apps (yes, I am still a big supporter of many things Microsoft). Certainly VS is not like VFP, but it seems to gets the job done. Fortunately, I can still use VFP when working with and manipulating data – something I highly recommend as the VS data tools seem to be lacking in this area. I am also playing around with Adobe Flash and just picked up a copy of Adobe Flex Builder. It is very cool! Anyone played around with Flex?
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>For me, this past week’s announcement was really just old news that many of us folks in the Fox community already knew. As I have not been that in-tuned with everything Fox over the past year, I was a bit surprised at the reactions. Many of us just assumed that the VFP Roadmap posted after shipping VFP9 had disclosed much of this information. I guess anytime Microsoft makes some sort of public announcement, one can expect all sorts of reactions. And while this news may not be what many VFP developers were hoping for, I must say that Microsoft has been fairly honest about the future of Visual FoxPro for a while now. I don’t think any of the VFP MVPs at last week’s summit were stunned by the news.
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>It is great to see that wonderful fighting spirit still an active part of the Fox community. For those of you willing to fight for the future of Visual FoxPro, I fully support your efforts. Don’t let the naysayers dissuade you! A great product is always worth fighting for. If you want to write Bill and Steve, you should feel free to do so. I am sure they would love to hear your “constructive” responses despite what others including those from Microsoft might say. Just don’t start a riot and blame me :).
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>As to my thoughts on the matter, I know that many of you would have preferred that Microsoft not release such news last week. Maybe not because you needed to know about future VFP plans (most of you already knew them), but rather to protect potential future VFP development opportunities while allowing time to scale up with new replacement technologies. I think that was a key factor in Microsoft delaying this announcement. Despite Microsoft’s positive spin that it will continue to support Visual FoxPro through 2015, your customers will now have more reason to question new applications developed using Visual FoxPro. But this Fox scrutiny has been going on for years, especially with enterprise savvy IT managers.
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>In the past, there have been numerous efforts to kill Visual FoxPro. And this is not just internal to Microsoft. I can recall discussions with prominent 3rd party VFP developers encouraging us to kill the product so that they might benefit (via .NET training, conversion tools, frameworks, etc.) from the exodus of VFP developers over to .NET products. When MS chose not to bring VFP over to .NET, for many that was the real strategic message on its future. I have read some recent blogs by friends indicating that the VFP product is mature and there really isn’t a need for new versions of the core executable. To some extent I agree (technically), however, if we get back to the business model, new versions provide incentive for clients to invest in new development efforts. Believe it or not, we also had people tell us that they would be just as happy if we had continued to release new versions without any new features. The fact that there was a new version meant that the product had a viable
> future – something good they could sell to their clients. Certainly, there is still plenty of future Fox development work out there today, but that will only diminish over time now that Visual FoxPro has been officially placed in maintenance mode. Other factors such as compatibility under Vista will also play a role in VFP’s future.
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>Internally, I don’t think many folks outside the Fox team ever got the true essence of Visual FoxPro and its unique community. To some, VFP is just another alternative (competitor) to VB, Access or SQL Server. To some, it’s just another headache for them to deal with on their already overloaded schedule. And to some, it’s the bottom-line. Certainly, VFP is not a massive income generator for Microsoft. But many of the costs such as support and marketing are offset by you guys, a loyal community more than willing to provide your free time in support of keeping the product alive. In the end, I think VFP just got shuffled under the rug to the point where executives didn’t have the time or interest to deal with it. To be honest, I don’t know if the executives involved were always given accurate information. I know that there was a lot of positive news and data that emanated from folks who played an active role on the Fox team, but there were others not as closely involved who likely put a
>more negative spin on things.
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>The reality of the situation is that the Fox community has always been the thorn in Microsoft’s butt -- and the reason that Visual FoxPro has lasted as long as it has. For years dating back to VFP7 and earlier, a concerted effort had been made by marketing to persuade Fox developers to migrate over to .NET (Visual Studio). Product features (in both VFP and Visual Studio) were implemented as enticement to assist in the transition. To Microsoft’s credit, many Fox developers did jump ship to other products. These were often for business reasons because the availability of new VFP development work was diminishing. But the community loyalists remained and provided inspiration for several new versions (VFP8 and VFP9), which to me were some of the best efforts to come out of the Microsoft Developer Division in years, especially if you consider the resources we had to work with.
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>Folks often ask me why Microsoft can’t just sell off the product source code so that development of the VFP core executable can continue. Microsoft’s standard response to this has been that it needs to protect its IP (Intellectual Property). I don’t believe this to be the case at all, and many others at Microsoft would also concur. Additionally, after discussions with legal interests, it is apparent that there are viable ways to protect Microsoft IP. Microsoft could easily execute a special license agreement with a 3rd party company who might want to develop a new version such as a VFP10. This agreement would essentially allow Microsoft to keep its Intellectual Property associated with VFP while letting it license the source code to this 3rd party (no transfer of code ownership occurs). The future business opportunities with Visual FoxPro for Microsoft are merely a drop in the bucket, but not so for a small company willing to take a chance. No, the real reason IMHO that Microsoft is
>not likely to license out VFP source code in the future is…can you guess? Yes, it all comes back to the Fox community again. Microsoft doesn’t want to give away you guys, its loyal Fox community to someone else. And while it may be years before many of the Fox loyalists migrate over to .NET, Microsoft is willing to wait it out.
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>So I was thinking the other day, that the one thing we still have is this wonderful Fox community. And that is something that Microsoft can’t take that away from us. I know that I will be friends with many of you for years to come, and look forward to lots of fun times in the future where we can get together, share a Jell-O shot and just reminisce how amazing it was to be part of a world focused around a very unique product with roots from a small town in Ohio. Long live the Fox!
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>…Randy