>>Peter,
>>
>>I'm sorry, but I agree with Tore and others. YAG has (IMO) done more and explained more than he really needed to. This is something you're just going to have to accept and move on.
>
>Define "needed to". If this was more than was expected, that means M$ is truly a corporation without a shred of responsibility to its long time customers, but rather more like a highway gas station - serving anonymous passers by, and if any of them don't like it, others will come.
>
>If this level of opaqueness is OK, and if the common wisdom is that Microsoft is fully entitled to freely choose what to tell us and what not, and if anyone questioning that is just a whiner - then so be it. I'm entitled to vote with my feet, no whining.


Anonymous? I feel less anonymous with the FoxPro group at Microsoft than with probably any other product I have ever bought. And I don't claim any special insiderdom. For as long as I have been using FoxPro the product team has been part of the community. We know who the team members are and what their roles are. In many cases we know them like old friends -- likes and dislikes, where they're from, family situation, favorite bands, etc.

Do we know these things about the people who made the cars we drive, the computers we use, our favorite cereal? No. Maybe this is the exact paradox. Some are feeling betrayal on a personal level. Ultimately it came down to a business decision which I think was announced as personally as could reasonably be expected from a large corporation. Maybe they do it differently outside North America but I never expected a full explanation of the whys and wherefores that led to the decision. To me it exceeded expectations that Alan Griver announced it personally on the UT and has stuck around to talk about it.

Besides, would we really want to know what the reasons behind the decision were? Let me make a perhaps inapt analogy. We have probably all been dumped at one time or another by a lover or someone we wanted to be a lover. Would we really be happier if they had told us why in specific detail? Maybe "We seem so distant lately, maybe we should see other people" is the most humane approach.