>(1) How much money is needed to complete the job (meaning a person can compile their VFP code
>and produce an EXE for distribution),

FWIW, this is the primary reason I began work on Visual FreePro, Jr. (VJr).

The idea was that I wouldn't have to build the new developer framework for the full virtual machine, multiple platforms, multiple operating systems, but rather just create an almost identical open source version of Visual FoxPro (called Visual FreePro, Jr.).

This would make development time much shorter, but would also severely limit its functionality (tied to Windows, no easy ability to port to another platform because everything would be using Windows' facilities (callback window message system, libraries, DLLs, the GDI for graphics, and so on)). Visual FreePro take a broader approach and virtualizes all of that (making everything work with Visual FreePro protocols so for new platforms there are small modules which have to be re-written, but the bulk of all the code works without any change whatsoever).

VJr would've allowed me to complete the logic for the xbase commands and functions (their algorithms would be debugged), and then later when I returned to Visual FreePro development, I would have the logic all worked out, and all I would need to do is re-apply it to the new framework.

Visual FreePro, Jr. would be, in that way, kind of like PocketFox by Fernando Alvarez, but with nearly all command and functions supported for traditional VFP-like coding.