>>Are they paying you a maintenance fee? if so then you probably should eat the refox cost and not even mention it. If not then they're expecting a lot if you're supposed to maintain sourcecode indefinitely for no $ and be ready to resume work for an hour or two using a development version you and Microsoft shelved years ago. You could apologize that you don't work with VFP5 any more and would need to lift the whole system to VFP9 which will take more than an hour, unfortunately. Also you might ask them for a regular fee so you can keep the sourcecode in a form that will allow efficient maintenance if necessary.
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>>However, refox does more then decrypt. It also compresses and encrypts so nobody else can pick your work apart. The compression is worth a lot IMHO. Also encryption is good if you're selling licenses for a standard product: Refox may not 100% prevent people pirating but it does make it more trouble than it's worth in most cases for people to delve around in your good work. So maybe this is a good time to consider refox anyway.
>
>No, this customer does not pay me a maintenance fee. To be honest, I was hoping that they would stop using this program by now. And I am still very surprised that for 9 years they have been using it daily without any issues {knock on wood}. I wrote this program only 2 years after starting with VFP. I am still very much a newbie as far as VFP development. So I am really in shock that my spaghetti code of 2000 still works (talking about beginner's luck).
>
>I did talk to them about upgrading to VFP 9 and they are thinking about it. They are probably saying to themselves, "this VFP 5 or whatever works very well, why we need new version".

If you can get you hands on the source code then forget about what follows. If you can't keep reading.

You could call this one tough love. Like Microsoft did to us ;-)

They didn't tell us. You're still using Windows ME. Allright then we'll keep supporting YOU (and only you) because we like YOU (and only you). And feel free to move on whenever you're ready. Don't worry we'll keep supporting you forever and ever. Ok now this example is not the best 'cause ME is probably the worst OS made by MS.

So perhaps it's time for you to tell that customer. It's my way or the highway ;-)

Who's the IT professional?

I understand that you could feel that there is a special link between you and that customer. Probably a matter of respect. That respect has to go both ways.