You're mistaken that VFP was discontinued because Microsoft saw it as a strong competitor to .NET. There are two reasons. 1) VFP sales were declining and VFP either had or was close to the point where sales did not cover expenses of continued development. 2) DevDiv made the decision that COM-based tools were not the future. It was .NET. Therefore, VFP did not fit.

>You should look at this as a compliment to VFP that Microsoft looked upon VFP as strong enough of a competitor to their .NET product that they thought they had to discontinue it. While MS Access is weak enough on the low end to demand upgrades to MS higher end products if the client grows. For example, there are built-in limitations to ms-access on the web when using for web applications.
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>My belief, however, is that VFP will be even more of a competitor in its present state with the community building around it like with ActiveVFP and CodePlex. Ever hear of PHP? There's no Microsoft or Oracle behind it. Just a community of developers. And VFP beats PHP with no problem as far as technology and features on Windows are concerned.