Your questions make perfectly sense, so here are some insights:

First, what make the date magical are some people that simply look at the MS website and see that VFP vanishes from earth and space on that date. At least that is how they interpret the meaning of "Extended Support End Date". Of course we know that lots of software that was written 15 or more years ago is still running and keeps on running at many places, and that the meaning of lifecycle support has nothing to do with whether a certain product can be used beyond the end date or not.

This software is a new customized software. Under "normal" circumstances we would look at .NET and that was our initial plan with this project.
The reason why we want to do this with VFP is because the client sets a very short implementation phase, where the software must be in production at 1st Jan 2012. (Probably they are concerned about the earth's life cycle support from the Mayan calendar).

We have a very robust 3-tier framework written in VFP 9 with MsSQL or MySQL backend, which enables us to generate large applications in a very short time. The code base has been updated during the last years in such a way that somebody who has limited VFP can still understand the code, because most functions are encapsulated in methods as far as that is sensible.

To use .NET with C# for instance, but using Winforms, would add a lot of burden on the execution of the project, and using Winforms would also be a tradeoff, because then we should use WPF or even better Silverlight in the first place.

We strongly believe, to make the client happy, he needs a quick solution, without bugs and errors, with great performance and to a reasonable price.


>And now for something completely different..... (lol)
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>Are you trying to sell an existing application or services to write a new application? Context is important. Secondly, if the client is concerned about 2015 (and I agree with Ken, that's not really an issue) then what makes that date magical? I mean, seriously, how many apps run for 4 years "as is" without major enhancements anyway?
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>If you are writing something absolutely from scratch with no existing codebase and that has to last beyond the magic year of 2015 then perhaps there's no pont in looking at VFP anyway. I'm just saying. Perhaps if it's a monolithic line-of-business app you'd be better off proposing Access (which has no end of life date at all, killing that issue). Or a basic VB .Net app using WinForms and a local SQL or XML datastore.
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>I guess my point, Christian, is to accurately answer your question I need a lot more context on the client, your relationship to them, and what theyt want/need.
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>>Once Ken Levy posted a mesage on UT regarding the life cycle of VFP and what that meant for the clients. Some client have the impression that because VFP is "dead" it would stop working suddenly after 2015, and I was looking for a good comment (preferably by MS or an employee of MS) that clears up that perception. So if you find the message or know of another statement that I could use to show to the client would be great.
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>>Christian