Tamar,

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.

IMHO we need to distinguish technical effort from marketing effort.

MS's FP team and the VFP leaders have definitely done a superb job technically.

But the "do nothing" marketing was already well entrenched by 1995 when VFP3 was released. I remember considerable disappointment in the FP forums about the lack of marketing surrounding the VFP3 release, with Sigler confirming that the "do nothing" behavior was deliberate. If you look at the wiki, you'll see that many VFP people were concerned, but many/most "leaders" were silent or displayed a fatalistic attitude. The only "leader" I remember remonstrating with MS in public on this topic was Jeff Winchell, who had effectively abandoned the FP camp by then.

On the marketing front, the most visible "leadership" in the last five years has been those encouraging migration to other MS products which began long before that was a rational technical decision for many of us. I'd also note that newer MVPs like Craig Boyd have made a splash with a very positive public commitment to VFP... that this behavior is unusual enough to be noteworthy carries a message IMHO.