Normally I roll my eyes at the "woe is me" VFP end of life posts, but I applaude you for at least proposing an interesting and different take on the situation.

>Forgive me if I am dredging up a topic that’s been discussed.
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>I’ve been working with VFP, well, dBase, since the early 80s, then Clipper, then VFP. It’s been a 24-year experience with several breaks here and there as an assembly language programmer (I used to write compilers for years).
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>Now I’m moving nicely into c#, liking it, things are going well, my company is converting VFP applications to c#, it’s a year long effort… but we’re moving right along, making the investment, like you are too probably. Visual Studio is a nice product.
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>Lately I’m noticing, with increasing frequency, Microsoft now has many applications that compete with my company’s applications. I see Microsoft has retail management software, wholesale and manufacturing software, etc… These are products with the Microsoft nametag (including but not limited to Dynamics, Navision, RMS, Great Plains, etc…).
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>So while my company is taking a year off to convert from VFP to c#, Microsoft sells competing products in my market. And oh, incidentally, it’s a coincidence they knocked out a lot of competing products written in VFP by discontinuing the VFP language (which they paid millions for ten years earlier).
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>Since my company pays a lot of taxes (a lot to me) and has a bunch of employees, I contacted my state’s senators regarding monopolistic and unfair practices, specifically regarding the VFP language shut-down, which puts companies with VFP products at least a year behind competing Microsoft products. I’m not a lawyer, but it seemed unfair to me.
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>My contact was well received (by one of them, the other one was very busy) and my issue was sent (CC me in writing) to the DOJ and several other federal agencies. In fact, I received letters from each agency stating it was being past along to a different office for review since it was not for their department…
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>All of this was well over one year ago… needless to say, nothing has happened. Not surprised either.
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>I was thinking of contacting the senators (the busy one may not be so busy any more) again to ask, through the freedom of information act, to see the results of the investigation, but I don’t really think it matters.
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>Sorry guys, I guess I’m just venting.
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>Any of you seeing patterns in the sand like I am or have I been programming just a wee bit too long? Set me straight.