>>>>>>>>>http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-32658340
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>Which confirms what I have written many times, but many people didn't believe me. A consequence of this is that Visual Foxpro applications will continue to work for a very, very long time.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>What you have written is that Windows 10 will be the last version of Windows and concluded from that (as repeated above) that "...FoxPro applications will continue to work for a very long time ...". This conclusion is what some people, myself included, disagree with.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>Windows 10 is the "last version" only in terms of MS not building a new OS every few years and selling it as a complete, shrink wrapped, packaged OS. It is the "last version" in name only. Instead of making a new Windows version every few years, Windows 10 will continue to be developed on a continuous basis and updates released via Windows Update or some other similar mechanism. This makes business sense because MS move away from trying to convince users to buy a new OS every 3 or 4 years (which gets progressively harder to do) to getting them to pay an automatic annual subscription fee for continuous updates much like subscribing to AV or similar services. They move from selling a product to selling a service.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>And because of the above, the conclusion you make that FoxPro "will continue to work for a very long time ..." is therefore debatable. If the OS will be continuously developed/enhanced/changed one cannot guarantee that FoxPro will continue to be supported or work. And because the OS will be continuously developed/enhanced/changed it is the "last version" in name only, not in actuality.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>Let's see in 2030 who was right.
>>>>>
>>>>>Right about what ???
>>>>
>>>>I say that VFP9 will still run on the version of Windows 10 that is the most recent one in 2030.
>>>
>>>I don't know if VFP9 will run that updated Windows 10 at 2030, but I know one thing there will be less more and less classical Windows applications in next a few years. Microsoft pushes to us Windows store applications. There is a project by Microsoft to generate Windows Store applications. MS supports us and a guy from MS calls me every week about that project.
>>
>>I too have seen the videos about APPX (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/APPX). It will have full support for Win32 applications because it will also include all Win32 APIs. That is really good news. It implies that we are now able to migrate in a slow pace. All our current applications can be run as Appx and be sold in the Windows Store. And future developments can be done either in VFP or with the help of other languages/platforms or a mix. In theory, there's no need to convert anything. That was a different story when we went from FPD to FPW to VFP.
>>
>>So, I side with Tore Bleken that we can be sure that our apps will work till at least 2030 and that we'll even be able to use the Development Environment and the language to develop new stuff. And VFP is still among the fastest dbms'es.
>
>Thanks for your support. I have more than 40 years of experience in computer science, so I know what I am talking about. I won't waste as much as a second in arguing with some of the self proclaimed computer experts here. The main point is that as long as it's called Windows 10 and is made for Intel architecture, it will have to support Win32 applications, and hence also VFP9. As soon as they remove the support for Win32, they are obligated to change the name, or they will lose all credibility.

Add to this that MS no longer has a valid argument to drop support for win32. The new architecture is based on virtualization. Each application gets its own sandbox. In the past decades they have built the win32 environment that perfectly fits in the sandbox concept. All they have to do is some copying. In essence, they copy the OS and the registry. Then they add to the registry the entries that your app wants to make and they copy the dlls that you want to write to the system32 map. And then they start your app. That's all. And on finish they wipe out the sandbox, including its version of the registry and your dlls. One advantage is that there's no longer a dll-hell. Great!