No no no....don't get me wrong. I am in no way questioning the integrity of the people involved. I have nothing but admiration for Doug and Tamar and Alan. In fact, I think it's pretty clear that anyone offering their time for the VFP community is doing it for love; those looking for money have moved on.

I'm just averse to navel-contemplating :-) even well well-intentioned.

YAG would never comment on this opinion, but knowing the way MS works it's likely not helping his career the clock cycles he spends on Fox. Like when I was there my last year it was "move on, find another niche, you're hurting your career....et al". It can't have gotten better.

Someone posted to this thread Calvin's name. I agree wholeheartedly but since he's a current MS employee it's sort of a conflict.

I'll give you guys the penultimate award candidate: Randy Brown. I don't want to go into detail but I doubt without Randy there'd have been a VFP 9 or Sedna. If you want to look back at Lifetime I can't think of a more deserving individual from VFP 7 onwards (and maybe before but that was before my time).

As to committee member ... how about someone like Sergey B. or Alex Sosa or someone else from parts of the world where new VFP development is thriving?

>I am no longer the most negative poster in this thread ;-)
>
>You do make a lot of good points. That said, I now accept that the award this year is well intentioned. And the fix is not in. That's what Doug said, explicitly, and I do not question his honesty, ever. Tamar said about the same thing in her weekly checkup on me the other day. She said she was "mildly peeved" at my comments in this discussion because the process is on the up and up. Like Doug, I completely trust Tamar. As Doug said, I was being too cynical. Just because something sounds possibly fishy doesn't mean it is.
>
>It would be nice to give the award to a new guy, as you put it. The trick might be finding him or her. I am sure whoever is named will be well deserving, regardless of what has happened to the product the past few years.
>
>Here's hoping you are doing well.
>
>>Doug, don't take it personally, but this is like looking for Great Navigators for the Titanic a month after it's sunk. I think we all know who the great contributors have been. Let me rephrase that - no we don't all know who these folks are. Ever since Ken initiated this "award" I always considered it some sort of masturbatory bs. I think it insults the people working day-to-day helping Fox developers in a much more hostile environment than we had in the heydey. It was easy being a Fox guru in the 80's and 90's and it's really hard now. So why worry about an award for folks who swam with the current? To heck with the old gurus (myself included); what can we do for the new guys?
>>
>>>The FoxPro Lifetime Achievement Award honors those individuals who have contributed a great deal to the FoxPro community over the years. See http://fox.wikis.com/wc.dll?Wiki~FoxProCommunityLifetimeAchievementAward~VFP for previous award recipients.
>>>
>>>These recipients wish to continue the award and have created a committee to select a recipient for 2010. The committee consists of previous recipients, Alan Griver (yag) of Microsoft, and one person from the FoxPro community. If you wish to be considered for inclusion on the committee, please email Doug Hennig (dhennig@stonefield.com) by April 30, 2010. The existing committee will select the community member and announce their selection in early May.
>>>
>>>The committee will then issue a call for nominations for the 2010 recipient and will make their selection from the nominees.