I've heard that MS aims to make $100,000 profit per full-time employee. It's a stale figure; it may be higher or lower now but the math is still interesting. Assuming it is approximately true, you'd be looking for $300K annually per VFP employee (1/3 profit, 1/3 business costs, 1/3 salary/benefits.) If you're not advertising widely or training the sales troops, you'd need a lot less than that. But lets say $300K. Assuming a base price of $200 you're looking at 1,500 sales of VFP per employee year. Assuming there's a new release every 2.5 years you're looking at 3,750 sales per version per full-time team member to exceed MS's profit expectation.

True or not? Who knows, especially since the figures may have been muddied if people purchased MSDN rather than VFP itself. What matters is that MS was telling us as early as 1995 that VFP was not part of MS's strategic vision. IMHO they expected interest to fall off much more quickly; no vendor expects to have to can a product 12 years after they've made it clear they want users to migrate. ;-) IMHO it's down to some of those people inside MS who kept producing good product and kept it alive certainly long after I expected an EOL. The timing was actually pretty bad for MS: by the time they canned it the market was less reactive to such pressures and VFP people had a decade to get used to being out on a limb. Had MS canned it earlier- say in 2000- people were already prepared for turmoil with Y2K etc etc and VFP would be a knitting group by now. ;-) Instead there's a real chance it will become a NET language completely outside MS's control or a legacy tool used forever by stalwarts with loyal customers.

As an aside, a cynic would say the position MS is at today is a bit like the UK after WWII: after the victory the majesty is still there but the Empire is fragmenting into a Commonwealth of Nations pursuing their own goals and there are many more hands on the levers of power.