>Yeah, Mike, I remember. But VFP3 was 5 1/2 years before the decision was made to drop out of VS and even before VFP was part of VS.
>
>Seems to me that those who saw VFP being dropped out of VS as a sign were not really VFP developers but generalists as I recall that the long-time VFP developers who were not really into any other platform seemed to largely support the disconnect.
>
>Honestly, being exposed extensively to both platforms for several years, I don't see how VFP would have made it in .Net 1.0 without a hysterical outcry (deservedly so) from the community about the loss and limitation to functionality. I don't see how we would have retained our DML without an elaborate new namespace; we would have required the framework for distribution; we would have completely lost backward compatibility as I doubt the resources would have been proffered to write conversion wizards.

But then how do the guys at eTecnologia do that? They seem to be a three guy shop (just guessing, as only one of them speaks here) and yet they are making VFP use .net engine without sacrificing compatibility, and have crossed the 2G boundary, by making it use 64-bit functions. Was there anything else that I forgot, that was part of the "if VFP went .net it would" mantra of the times?

My conclusion to this, when the question presented itself, was "they do it because they can". Which then means, if they can, so could have Microsoft done seven years ago, but just didn't want to. Instead, we got this elaborate story about losing functionality, compatibility, DML, and a bunch of other goodies. I was among the "no we don't want VFP.net" crowd then, but now I believe it was for all the wrong reasons, except the turtle/rabbit development cycles in .net/VFP, the one right reason among them. This story is what got me turned from patient but grumpy user of M$ software into just grumpy. This was the last straw - I am now thoroughly convinced, via a story that I'm tracking for 17 years, that Microsoft can't be trusted. Actually, I got some personal experience with this shop that goes back 22 years, but that was before Fox.