>Rick, please provide/confirm two numbers;
>
> (1) How much money is needed to complete the job (meaning a person can compile their VFP code
> and produce an EXE for distribution),

What I'll be building is the core, which will allow for the generation of distributable executables. If you use only of the ten initial functions I write, you'll be able to run your application as the core is still being written. The more complex your code is, the more things it does that haven't been coded for yet, the longer it will take. All in all, most of the code would run in six months. Less if I could find developers to help me.

As far as money, the several companies would have to come up with probably $3,000 per month for six months, so about $18,000 total. My company would, most likely, pay for the rest. But, that's not a guarantee. It's hard to know with owners and managers. I have a good reputation at my company, but it's still just me working on all of Visual FreePro. I've been told many times one reason they don't move forward is they're afraid of the "Rick gets hit by a bus" scenario. To work around that limitation and pay for me to work solely on Visual FreePro, roughly double that amount and I'm all yours. :-)

>(2) the time required (e.g. you say 6 months).

If I could work on it every day I believe I could have the core completed in two to three months. Writing the many functions which mimic the behavior of VFP would require time to write and perfect the algorithms. I believe if I had six months of continuous development time I could have a version that compiles, produces an executable, has the IDE, debugger, is able to be run, extended, edit-and-continue, and is functional. It would not be optimized yet. On many things (mostly table data related, and browse window display speed) it would be slower than VFP. Optimizing the code would just take analysis of what's slow, a redesign of key algorithms, etc.

My basic goals are:
(1) Fuctional, and correct.
(2) Features completed.
(3) Optimizations (speed, size).

The functional goals are:
(1) The framework is designed (a command compiles to something which is routed properly to the code for that command)
(2) The import of existing projects, forms, classes, is working correctly, converting into BXML (the binary xml files VFrP uses).
(3) The IDE is working.
(4) The debugger is working.
(5) The VFrP support library for commands and functions is expanded and completed.

I estimate the above will take six months, but the parts that will remain at the end of six months are commands and functions not yet supported.

>Just btw - will VFrP handle 3rd party ActiveX controls?

Yes, but not as part of the native build. A separate DLL plugin is required (provided for by Visual FreePro) to go along with the distributed executable to make ActiveX stuff work (because the target is not just Windows, but also Linux, Android, etc.). You'll have to have "myapp.exe" and "vfrpwex.dll" (Visual FreePro Windows Extender) to provide special access and abilities into Windows-only features.