>For what reasons had it to be phased out anyway. Suppose the city council decides to phase out my neighbourhood. They tell me that all houses will be torn down in 2015. That may be the best solution to a problem, but all involved will ask for the reasons.
Big difference. The city council doesn't own my house for one thing nor is Microsoft coming to my house even in 2015 and telling me to stop running my VFP application. In case you missed the point: They are not UPDATING the product anymore - there's no mention of disallowing you from using it until the day you die.
When you agree to a license agreement in software the value you are receiving is very tangiable anyway, but even beyond that there's never any guarantee for unlimited support 'til death do us part'.
It's like I said - I don't agree with Microsoft's decision either because I think it wouldn't have taken Microsoft much to keep VFP going given the limited staff involved in it.
But imagine who would want to keep on working on a VFP project that is completely marginalized by Microsoft (internally at Microsoft)? Those Microsofties who worked on VFP these last few years are brilliant developers that are now doing their magic in other parts of Microsoft. Do you think those guys would *want to* stick around on this sinking ship forever? Working on 20 year old technology that can't take advantage of the newest (or not so new) features of Windows (or at least not without a major reworking of the entire engine)? 64 bit support, Unicode support, native windowing to get a natural UI look are just a few. Why do you think these things weren't done even back when there were still funds available to that effect? It's because these things would required completely tearing VFP appart and rebuilding it. It's amazing what this ancient code base has been able to do for so long, but it's long been a quirky environment from a UI perspective, from an internationalization perspective... heck most of the problems with Vista now are due to those very issues in the engine... At this point keeping VFP going would be a constant catch up game in fixing inconsistencies with changes in the operating system. It's not that bad yet, but it will just keep going as the OS changes. Eventually VFP will look like a FoxPro for Windows application looks to you today!!!
If you take a few minutes to look at it from a non-selfish perspective you will find that there are lots of reasons for Microsoft to disengage itself from FoxPro - good heritage or no...
You may not agree but as you say hopefully you can understand which in the end is all that matters...
+++ Rick ---
