>>I see many companies (mainly SMB's) running entirely on VFP, for whom moving somewhere else would mean so many changes, so many inflection points, so many business risks that it requires a very strong engineering team to carry on safely. It also appears that many of these companies can't afford these engineering skills, for both economical and cultural reasons.

There's a fundamental contradiction here.
If they need a strong engineering team and can't afford one, how did they get where they are?
By the way.. who DOESN'T need a strong engineering team?