I think what people blame them for is taking a very powerful product that was doing a lot of great things for a lot of great companies and killing it for no valid reasons. I've heard the excuses and they are exactly that.
You have mentioned before your blogging about the decision two years before it was announced. What is your point here? The death of VFP was rumored since the day they bought it and they never did anything substantial to prove they weren't going to kill it, so what is the significance of your blog entry? It wasn't clairvoyant. Perhaps you mean it as simply one example of why people shouldn't have been surprised. And on that point you are, of course, correct. No one should have been surprised. But that doesn't mean they can't be angry about it.
>Any career in any field can be influenced by outside forces. You shouldn't have been surprised by Microsoft's decision. I blogged about it happening two years before the announcement. You're right in that Microsoft is not responsible for your career, but you are blaming them for your inabilities to follow what was happening with VFP and not learning other technlogies.
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>IMO, every computer language out there has risks of not being supported in the future. .NET? Yep. Java? Oracle says they'll keep updating it, but right now Sun is losing $100 million per month. Oracle may decide that Java is one thing they can drop. Open Source? There have been lots of projects that started out with lots of momentum, only to die. Could happen to Python, Ruby, etc.
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>>I'm don't understand where you are coming from? How could Microsoft take responsibility for my career?
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>>But they have influenced my career with their decision to drop VFP.
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>>I had invested money and time into a MS product and that's gone (or soon will be). My customers invested money and they are concerned about that investment. I wonder what companies like AccountMate and all the other accounting programs written in VFP feel about their investment in a the MS product.
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>>If possible I will never again allow a company control my future. I have been successful (but still in process) at reaching that goal by using FOSS products.
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>>I believe I have made the right decision.
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>>What about yourself - has MS's decision influenced your career? Have you continued to invest time and money into MS products. Are your customer happy they will have to replace their software and not just an upgrade?
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>>Johnf
