I believe a lot of people have a misconception what software programming actually means. Especially when building VFP business applications, 99 % of the code contains no big secrets or evolutions at all, it's just the usual variables, values and loops and data processing that anybody can learn by himself in a few weeks. If someone is able to read my code, they are so smart to figure it out by themselves in the first place, so let them have it, because they will go through the headaches of understanding what I was thinking and I don't want to sit in their chair doing that!

The real work of programming business application is not the "secret holy code", it's understanding the context you are working in. Let me give you an example: We had to develop a pharmacy software that gives control messages when a patient receives medication that does not work together or could cause an allergic reaction (the real situation is like 100 times more complex that that but it will do for the example). It took us years to understand how those systems are working and we had to pay money to follow courses and had to spend lots of resources of the company and time and effort. It is an investment that hopefully pays off at a certain time.

When I like to protect the program, it's not the "code" that I like to protect here, because, let's be serious, its just mundane VFP functions that are used. Someone is lazy and does not understand the "code"? I will send him the CHM help file for VFP - for free!

But if we let any competition take over our invested research, they can simulate the procedures on medication control without investing into the courses, time and effort and the risk of investment. So they would be able to make money, because they have not worked really hard. The bottom line: The lazier you are, the more you win.

That is very much what happened in Eastern Germany during the communist area, everything detoriated because there was no incentive for hard metal work, no funding for research and no interest in striving to be good.


>A subject came up today at Foxite that has taken my life by storm. It was most unexpected. Here's the thread: http://www.foxite.com/archives/0000380939.htm and if you have an account there, you can go straight to the forum and that message id 380939.
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>In short, due to the way the subsequent responses unfurled, I realized today for the first time that I have the technical ability to create an un-DeFox utility. And as I began to consider what that means, that all people everywhere would be able to obtain the source code for all compiled Visual FoxPro applications, a new focus in my life has begun to emerge (as this is a large part of what I'm trying to do with Visual FreePro). By writing that utility, I would also be doing something very similar for Visual FoxPro -- opening up all projects to all people to learn and garner knowledge from, as well as build upon as a new base, enabling each of us to be teachers unto others.
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>Many people have taken great exception to the idea, and I have found myself considering this possibility more and more. In so doing, I wrote this post which is on that thread at Foxite (message id 381070).
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>I repost it here for consideration.
>Blessings...
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>We are a community of living, breathing human beings, each with special gifts, talents and abilities to give back unto the world. These are gifts given to us by God, and they are to be used by us to the betterment of all, of loving our neighbors as ourselves.
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>And it is in these other, contrary areas of hoarding where we find goals which have no place in any society: Power hoarding. Political hoarding. Insider's hoarding. The "Good ole boy club" hoarding of cliques. Money hoarding. Class / Societal hoarding. Educational hoarding. Technology hoarding. Knowledge / idea hoarding.
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>All such hoarding is evil. All walls of hoarding deserve to be torn down. They serve no positive purpose whatsoever. It is harmful to all, including even the hoarders because even those few it enriches receive their gain at the expense of literally all other people everywhere. And when gain is had in such a way, it is not gain. It is loss. The hoarders are so utterly harming themselves beyond words by hoarding. The hoarder thinks he's receiving gain, but every ounce is loss. All of it because the resulting impact upon society is being imposed by men's decisions to hoard, rather than upon God's ability to grow (God is life) by His already in existence action of giving gifts to the many, and all of them for the betterment of the many. God sees in grand visions which span all people, while men see in little empires. All such hoarding is evil. Nothing but evil. It harms everyone. And is to be undone.
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>There are men and women, living, breathing people (capable of loving, and being loved, as ANY of us), who are right now to our right, and to our left, and they are suffering today, this very minute, because of this hoarding. They have been shut out. Denied. Kept at arms length. Meant to pay more. Meant to receive less. Meant to have greater difficulty. Greater struggles. They are those who need us to help them. And they need us to help them just as much as we need them to help us. We are that community designed and purposed to grow together, one to another, in love, helping, loving, teaching, lending a hand in all areas to which we've been blessed, to which we're able. A community. An oh so tightly knit community of men and women. People.
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>All over this world people are operating in conditions well below that at which they should be operating (as per their base capabilities as human beings with like abilities as any of us), and it's only because other people in society, the hoarders, and those following the hoarders who, by their following, give tacit approval of the evil actions. Those people are not looking out for their neighbor, not looking to help when they can (even if they might lose a little personal money in the process), not looking to walk in love, but are rather looking to walk in pursuit of selfish appetites, acquisition of things, personal aspirations of power, of domination over others, of building invisible empires of assumed vastness, bent around material wealth and power, and they are utterly blind to the fact that they have nothing, and that they are only harming everyone they encounter, and to such an extent that were they ever to awaken to the reality, it would cause them to weep and weep and weep and weep.
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>That day is coming soon, by the way. The day of weeping.
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>What's needed is more time spent with those many individuals of suffering. It needs to be personal. Alongside. Literally working in and among as daily laborers, hands helping, speaking one on one, standing face to face, in conversation, reflection, being humbled.
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>Such personal action would embrace the reality that we are all here together upon this Earth, as people, alike, shared, that none of us is in isolation, but that by our choices, and only by our choices, we isolate ourselves from others who are no more or less deserving that we are, but are still being denied by those choices which place up front a usurping by the hoarder's "position in life" as per the evil actions and choices related to hoarding.
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>We are of one community, of people, one people, and we are all alike. All of us. And we all need each other. All of us. Not one of us is exempted. We are of a single knitting, woven together as one.
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>Spending less time holed up in our comfortable lives and the high estates brought by circumstances of convenience (being the first to produce a product, for example), reinforced by a twisted legal system which serves individuals at the expense of the masses, that hinders progress by rewarding the few while denying the many (and especially so in the digital age and realms of proprietary digital content, including software), that's what's needed. A refocusing of the real things (people), and a casting away of invisible, dead things that some pursuit of "absolute dominion over the thing" (patents, copyrights, license agreements) afford, being able to affect the lives of the entirety of man by decisions made to serve the dead at the expense of the living.
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>The world needs more people willing to pursue and grow life, in the field of love, being willing to sacrifice all of the dead things for the needs of that love, which translates to loving themselves, loving their neighbors, and loving God first and foremost, for He is truly the enabler of all other forms of love a person can possess, for He is truly the source of all life, all growth, all prosperity, all riches, and all time.
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>People are categorically harmed by hoarding. It brings nothing but death, loss, destruction to that which is otherwise achieved by sharing and growing together in love, and by encouraging one another continually to do our best, helping each other out in whatever ways are possible.
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>Hoarding is wrong. Personal empires are wrong. Invisible monopolistic fortresses of legality are wrong. And in my particular area of the world, I happen to possess expertise in the x86 machine, and I desire to bring those talents to bear to serve the people, not the hoarders. It is the entire purpose of Visual FreePro. And it is the entire purpose of my life. You can hear more about that in the last one hour of this video (beginning around 30 minutes in): http://tinyurl.com/mfn8jer
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>It is now for some heavy consideration about whether or not to write an un-DeFox utility. I will be praying over this, remembering that God says "Let love be without dissimulation (deceiving/deception). Abhor that which is evil; cleave to that which is good." As well as, "He that is unjust, let him be unjust still: and he which is filthy, let him be filthy still: and he that is righteous, let him be righteous still: and he that is holy, let him be holy still." And, "Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord. Therefore if thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink: for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head. Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good." And finally, "Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. Amen."