>>At one time, I worked on product that used Pervasive database. We couldn't sell the software because IT departments had never heard of Pervasive and had no idea how to support/backup/maintain it. We moved to SQL Server. If you're selling a product, why risk the sale?
VFP is not a database, it is an application development environment typically needing no special "support/backup/management." The point you make was more applicable back in the day when people used dbfs rather than connecting to SQL Server or MySQL or whatever. What I see in 2015 is that there's no contemporary product that can be simply xcopied to a machine or run successfully over a network as easily as it used to be back in the Delphi/VFP/VB days.
"... They ne'er cared for us
yet: suffer us to famish, and their store-houses
crammed with grain; make edicts for usury, to
support usurers; repeal daily any wholesome act
established against the rich, and provide more
piercing statutes daily, to chain up and restrain
the poor. If the wars eat us not up, they will; and
there's all the love they bear us."
-- Shakespeare: Coriolanus, Act 1, scene 1