>You know, that's really nonsense. MSFT poured a major effort into VFP 3 and there was marketing and advertising. The "do nothing" marketing came much later.

No it's not nonsense. I saw no "major effort." But the main thing is that the "do nothing" approach did come and it worked. When a company ignores any product, people start getting hesitant about using that product. So M$ turned their back on it for long enough, then turned around and said "Well, look, we can't do anything else with this product because the user base is so small." But that was due their own efforts (or lack thereof). They couldn't just kill it outright because that would have given them a black eye. So they kill it through attrition while they get .NOT up and running.

>If Microsoft's goal when they bought Fox in 1992 was killing the product, they did a really bad job of it, given that it's now 15 years later and we're still getting one more interim release. If all they wanted was the technology, they didn't need to ship 6 major versions.

When the complaints came load and clear from major customers about not killing it, they got the message. And with billions and billions of dollars of cash in the bank, they could wait it out. You know and I know that what they want is to sell a combination of some dev language and SQL Server because that makes them much more money. Despite their marketing hooey about them wanting to help customers reach their potential, what they really want is to reach their potential. And that means making more and more money, so a great product like VFP that's reasonably priced and royalty-free ain't gonna cut it. It has to go.

Tamar, are you just a M$ apologist?