If that's the criteria, then you better be prepared to say the same thing to folks like Walter Meester, John Ryan, Peter DeValencia, Naomi...

??!! I'm not talking down NET or predicting a dire future, all I'm doing is querying suggestions that seem daft to me. If you're saying that I'm querying quite a lot, that's because people keep making strange claims quite a lot. ;-)

Reviewing the data more closely, I see that 15% of the US economy is contributed by micro-businesses. In particular, in 1998 there were more than 15 million owner-operator concerns. Hopefully we can agree that these sorts of firms aren't going to queue for a NET/SQL server rewrite... however, if you can persuade just 1% of that market to buy a $50 module because it provides more than $50 in value to them, you'd be rich. I know of at least 4 FP developers who became millionaires selling apps for a few hundred $ into this segment- one of them still has his app in FP2.5 and shrugs when he is warned that customers will start migrating unless he modernizes it. ;-)

I also see that small to medium-sized firms are responsible for 45% of the IT spend, supporting your advice that re-writes in this arena can keep people busy. However, I'd also suggest that this segment may have been offering juicy early-adopter advantages but will soon be saturated (if it isn't already) by refugees from other products, incumbents and very large players migrating down from the over-served large business arena, as well as offshore outsourcing resellers. Competition for profitable contracts can be expected to intensify with the bigger concerns raising similar FUD issues about small players as you now raise about VFP. If you haven't had the "what if you get run over by a bus" risk discussion yet, you soon will. ;-)

I don't have to choose myself, but IMHO those micro-businesses look pretty good. The big cats will need to spend the time dominating the larger/middle-sized arena before they come sniffing, by which time it should be possible to establish a viable user-base and an income stream to support lifestyle for at least a decade.

Of course this is all IMHO. ;-) Next I'd be looking at market segments to see where micro-businesses congregate, looking for an under-served niche. As for development tool- yes, I'd consider that... once I've found the area where my skills and market understanding offer most promise. NET may be a no-brainer, but so may some other system that none of us ever heard of, but which is used to control a fabric cutter or robotic painter or ??? Who can say?

All I'm saying is that the model of a contractor or partnership putting up a shingle hoping for bespoke work in a specified platform is not the only or necessarily the best approach for everybody in current market conditions. Obviously you're happy with it, as will others be, which is cool, but if people are considering change surely the best advice is to look for the best opportunity rather than just scrubbing out and rewriting the name of the development tool.