>Well, you might ask the same question for the other xBase tools. Speaking of which where is the xBase market today? Eh - FoxPro is the one that's even still around. Maybe you would have been better off with Clipper? Visual Objects worked out real well didn't it? How about dBase getting sunk by Borland in a 2 year window?
Or, in the same line, VB6, J++ and VBA.
The difference here is that in those cases the companies didn't (AFAIK) try to bleed the user base of the product they were sinking into their other products. I somehow don't remember Borland pushing dBase users into Delphi/Paradox/whatever, or CaVo even having any alternate product to offer. I may be wrong, though, these things were happening when I didn't have much access to news.
So on one hand, kudos to Microsoft for having the patience to play this game so long. In the end, we have a pretty much feature complete and stable tool that we can happily use for years on. OTOH, nobody likes being played.
>The problem is that xBase as a technology got completely marginalized in the late 90's and FoxPro had enough of a user base then to warrant continuing on. But since then - the userbase has dropped significantly with zero influx of new people. Fewer users who buy the product, technology that doesn't fit with Microsoft's strategic vision - what's not to like for Microsoft?
The "product nobody's buying" is the part of self-fulfilling prophecy that I mentioned in the other branch of this thread. We were complaining about the lack of sales effort for VFP since when - turn of century or so? So of course nobody's buying when your own sales force doesn't know you're selling it. The stories of MS representatives not knowing about VFP at all were numerous here over the years. There was a standing order to report those to Ken - but that was post festum patching, no measures were taken at the root of the problem. So yes, it didn't sell because there was no will to sell it at the top levels. The, ahem, strategic levels. Ken and the team did what they could, plus some, but it couldn't go further than the strategy allowed.
>There's no doubt VFP is a great product - I've built and have been involved some really amazing FoxPro applications, applications that many people would have said aren't possible with a tool like FoxPro and seen many more that are even mroe amazing in scope and functionality. But all that doesn't matter for a vendor who sees those same applications that can be built with other tools that fit closer to the direction of the company!
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>You may feel abandoned but you have plenty of choices including sticking with FoxPro and doing what presumably you ahve been doing for the last 10 years or more.
Abandoned? Well, no, that would assume I was kept close previously, and I didn't exactly have that feeling :). PO'd, yes.
And that's actually the plan - VFP works, will work for a considerable number of years, and I can play with other toys meanwhile. But I'm definitely going with something open source, it's more stable and not so influenced by whims of corporate strategy.
