>>About b, that's exactly what I think. I have refered to this possibility in one of my private emails to Eric den Doop and softly encouraged him to perhaps have a dialog, esp. with other forum 'owners'. His reaction was 'neglect', manifest indifference, too explicit denial, immediately putting the possibility aside as a non-issue. It gave me the impression that I came too close to the true motive, even closer than he realizes.
>>
>>>I have read the whole thing and my thoughts are (a) how does anyone find the time to read and participate in so many forums? (b) I don't think this has anything to do with forum rules. It's got to do with forum competition fears.
>
>But I actually find this more interesting:

>>>>>This is the link to which Naomi originally referred: http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=1542375&SiteID=1 ... not much there to comment on. ;-)
>
>Specially So what you are doing constitutes "Advertising" - which is specifically banned under the terms of the Microsoft Sponsored Forums.. Is it that status of UT at Microsoft has changed? In versions VFP8 and 9, UT is among the officially listed resources in the Task Pane Manager, along with Fox Wiki, Rick's FoxCentral, VFUG, ProFox, and FoxForum (aka MSDN - and that's a general MSDN link, nothing VFP specific, search after you log in, probably).
>
>Now if M$ so hates advertising of third parties, how come the Vista is so full of crapware? And I don't mean just OEM-added stuff, there are their own additions. I keep seeing them for the last 12 years.

Perhaps you missed this one: Re: YAG - How's it feel to be the one Thread #1204014 Message #1222361

I wonder, this thread has become way too long and is currently dealing with its 20th off-topic issue. Shouldn't we start a new one about this issue?