Hi Rick,
and everybody else, participating in this thread

Rick, many thanks for your clear words. I fully agree with everything, you have said.

And my admiration goes to YAG, Ken, Calvin and everybody else on the Visual FoxPro-Dream-Team, making Visual FoxPro possible for such a long time.

But as already the old Greek discovered: "panta rhei!" (πάντα ῥεῖ) or more contemporary: "The only what is constant is permanent change!" - So the question should be:

What are we going to do?

If you are considering this question, then it is always advisable to analyze, what other successful people and communities did to stay successful. In Europe, we have a rather small country (pop. about 7.5 Mio. people), which is an independent democracy for more than 700 years. How did they survive in a world with now about 6,500 Mio. people (roughly 866 times as many)?

One clue (besides many other clues) you will find in their constitution (article 6). It says
-> All persons are responsible for themselves, and shall make use of their abilities to contribute to achieving the goals of state and society.

Guess, who? (see further down)

What can the Visual FoxPro community learn from such a rather small community (under the assumption, that law and order are guaranteed by the same constitution)? Some of my proposals:
- First of all, take care of yourself (and don't make your neighbor responsible for your own troubles unless you have a legal claim).
- Second: It is your decision, what you are making with your life, professionally and private (and don't make others responsible unless ....).
- Third: Support the community with all, what you are able to do for it without expecting, that by doing so you earn any better legal claims than anybody else in the community.

If you do not like this way of thinking, stop reading now please!

So if such a small community was able to survive for more than 700 years and maintaining its independence, what are WE, what are YOU going to do to keep the Visual FoxPro community alive? Some more proposals for the honorable members of the Visual FoxPro community:
- It has been your decision to be a member of this community and to stay in it until today, so do not blame anybody else for your decisions (unless... see above; also see Rick's comments on the relevant information publicly available).
- Whether your customers like you or not depends only on the quality and reliability of the work you are doing for them and not on the decisions of your suppliers. (As lots of very good ideas have been provided so far for this topic I refrain from elaborating further)
- What are you doing to keep the community together? YAG, Ken, Calvin and everybody else on the Visual FoxPro-Dream-Team set excellent examples:
- Deliver excellent work, based on VFP;
- keep yourself informed about what is going on in the community and in the world around you and the community;
- learn all new technologies which will support your work;
- support your neighbors (in the community like UT, Foxite, dPFUG.de, VFUG.com, you name it....);
- try to win more members (but only those, who are at least as good as you or promise to become it);
- be present in all other communities and tell them, how much better Visual FoxPro will serve their needs;
- last but not least: support etecnologia, help preserving the language and the development system on top of the .NET platform, maintained by powerful people (http://www.etecnologia.net/products/VFPCompiler/VFPCompiler-index.htm).

Have a nice week, relax from the hot discussion and next week concentrate on YOUR contributions on preserving Visual FoxPro and its community!

Hans, starting my weekend now!

Oh, I nearly forgot: Check http://www.admin.ch/org/polit/00083/index.html?lang=en for above article 6.

>You have to understand one thing and one thing only:
>
>Microsoft doesn't owe you or the rest of us anything. Nowhere in the license agreement you accepted when you installed VFP (or any other product for that matter) does it say, Microsoft shall support VFP indefinitely and build new versions until there's not one developer left who wants it.
>
>Products get phased out. It happens all the time. And VFP didn't even really get phased out - the announcement just declares no new versions.
>
>Where do you draw the line? VFP developers are a dwindling breed. The VFP market is shrinking next to nothing. When should they quit? When you're the only one left standing? The developer base isn't tiny, but compared to other Microsoft technologies it is very, very small.
>
>You make it sound like somebody pulled a fast one on you. Like you have no choices. You have plenty of choices INCLUDING going on building VFP applications as you do now (I assume).
>
>C'mon. Microsoft has been clear for many years that they had no interest in making a strategic effort in VFP. If you couldn't see the writing on the wall you just were not paying attention and living in some sort of fairy land and instead of researching other technologies you'd be here raving trying to organize a petition to Microsoft or some other futile effort.
>
>We've been extremely lucky that the people who continued on the Microsoft FoxPro team for the last few years (Calvin, Aleksy, Robert, Alan and even Ken and Randy before) have been so dedicated to keeping the product going and providing major improvements in the last couple of versions - knowing full well that Microsoft wasn't putting much of an effort into VFP those years and knowning that MS would pull the plug eventually. I have to assume that there was a certain pride in building a quality product that's what kept them going - they 'owned it' and it showed. The product that is out there now is solid, mature and stable.
>
>So what do you want? Microsoft to say "We're sorry, Peter! We really didn't mean it. We'll build a custom new version just for you!" <s>
>
>Under the circumstances, YAG's announcement and response (especially to the various mean spirited responses) was much more personal than was required.
>
>It's done, it's over. But that doesn't mean that it's over for VFP. With support and boxes selling until 2015 you have plenty of time to continue building VFP applications...