Funny things happen sometimes. I know people who cannot stand to
eat at McDonalds and eat their burgers. But they go. They eat their
fish sandwich or some other such thing. (MacRib). When they go they take
their children who want to eat there, or want to play there and will eat there. I konw rather well someone who won't go to a Mcdonalds to take the
kids there or now the grandkids, unless there is a McRib. (I used to shave his face before he grew a beard.)

Now, I wonder what happens if McDonalds doesn't have the (money loosing) McRib? Me, wife, daughters (2), grandkids (2), other children (2) don't
go. They don't sell any burgers, drinks or fires while not selling that
expensive McRib. How many other times does that happen?

I know someone who worked in the McDonalds headquarters. They had an interesting battle going on between those who wanted to ditch the idea of a McRib entirely and those who insisted the small surge in other sales (enough to more than justify the McRib) was related to the McRib. Those who wanted to ditch the McRib said it was a coincidence that there were more sales of other items at that time ... or was there? The data analyist I knew said it didn't look like any statistical cooincidence they had ever seen. It looked like a real pattern.

I think VFP is definately a McRib that sells other stuff. I participated in an evaluation of converting a whole office to Linux. The total money sent to Microsoft each year for server licenses, upgrades to Office, new Windows Desktops, licenses on Exchange and so on was almost $45,000 a year.

The outside Linux consultant and the inside IT guy (a home Linux hacker) could make the case for abandoning Microsoft except for one little thing,
the critical VFP app for the company. That killed the whole case.

Now, however, the company is going to be looking to other options. They have NO reason to look to .NET over any other development environment that I can justify. One option is an Oricle thin client that can run on any browser with the Oricle supported off site on their vendor's system. It has alredy been contracted for and is in development. Now what is their case to stay with MSFT?

Well, they get to send $45,000 a year to MSFT. Isn't that a good business case? OOPS. Sooooo.

Stupid little VFP. They only sold two licenses to the place. Not worht it.
Uh oh! What about the rest of the stuff that was tied to the VFP?

IT guy is in the corner cheering Linux, Linux, Linux.

So for sure in this one case you are absolutely right!


>> I am almost tired disagreeing with such opinion :)
I don't know what money they make on VB,NET,etc but I do know
that VFP apps are 'holding' menu offices offices arround the world.

They are like a little Castles. It will be very hard if not impossible to eradicate all that. In many cases *Everything* in those offices was purchased solely because of VFP production app was implemented. Like a small village arround that little castle :)
Sometime even, MS earned more money then VFP vendor!

Pls DENNY ever causing folowing sales pattern:
VFP App (or group of apps) as Root Then;