You haven't looked much at .Net, have you? It does much, much more than wrap Windows API.

The .Net runtime ships as part of Windows, so if you license Windows, you license the runtime.

For the record, .Net is not Windows only. See xamarin.com

I worked in C++ for about 8 years. You'd have to pay me 10x what I make now to get me to do it again. What a freaking joke it is.

>I am not sold on .NET solutions -- to me it is nothing more that a framework with custom classes as wrappers for the windows API. Why go this route and add the overhead of this massive framework. I think that if you want an application framework as a foundation, there are probably better ones out there that are slimmer in size (I haven't looked only guessing here...). As for the API, the programmer can access these as needed in their own classes and build their own library over time.
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>Will the licensing model for .NET change -- don't know. But with .NET you are again at the mercy of Microsoft on this and we all know how revenue hungry they are. Win8 revenue is way down from what I have read -- will they start to look for alternative sources... To me, if I migrate away from VFP the answer would be an open solution -- C++ based with the abiltiy to move to any platform (windows, linux, mac, ...). I have programmed in the past in C++ and could pick it back up -- just not have had a need to. .NET is windows only and why tie yourself to a single platform if you are starting "fresh" again?