Hi Hank
>
>At this point, eTec has destroyed their commercial viability. There are steps they can take to regain it, and I hope they do that.

Perhaps better wording would be 'damaged' then destroyed. There is still huge number of businesses arround the globe who still use FoxPro on a daily bases and that is not likely to change any time soon, despite best efforts of M$ marketing and their scarecrows.
I wander how many shops are out there who *do* NET as a matter of marketing pitch (in self defence) but still have major cash-cow apps running under VFP. So they are slowly rewriting some apps to NET (and announcing it loudly), more in order to show technical vigilance then as a matter of real push from their (mostly SME) customer base. So if eTECH come through in let say 1-2 years with
full compatibility, my assumption is that many of those would rather simply abandon costly VFP2NET rewrites
in progress, and opt for simple recompiling of existing apps + some tweaks using eTech compiler.
(Provided of course that eTECH compiler delivers stable apps)

So IMO, time IS running out but not that dramatically. There is still timeframe for eTECH.

Now this is perhaps point in time where they should focus a bit more on communication and PR, then being
code/feature frenzy, because as you pointed out, substantial damage is done so this need fixing first, before
anything else.

>
>Whether they do or not, as you point out they have an outstanding technical achievement. I am rooting for them to pull it off, to complete the product and in doing that show what can be done. Theoretical pontificators here and in other places assured us all that VFP could never be ported to .Net. Whether I ever get to use the product commercially or not, I'll be smiling for a long time if/when they finish the product. Of course, I don't expect the theoretical pontificators to eat their words publicly, but just the thought of them having that particular meal privately will enrich my life for a long time -- probably for the length of time I knew them to be talking through their hats but didn't have a means of proving it, which goes back at least 5 years (when Frank Camp got tired of my complaining about the nay-sayers and created ASELOBJ() in .Net <s>), but probably at least a year before that.
>

:))


>Go, eTec, go!

Ditto here

& Talk eTec, TALK ! :)