>So I know servicing has ceased for Foxpro and as well selling of licensing and all that. What I would like to know is realistically how long should I expect to be able to hold out with my applications working on workstations? i.e. they work on Windows 10. Eventually hardware will change and the OS will change to not allow a VFP application to run on a windows workstation. I know this is a guess, but as an educated guess, what would you all say? How many years would we have left before we are forced out of it?

A few points, in no particular order:

1. VFP requires Win32 (32-bit Windows) in particular, rather than just a Windows workstation OS. There is an immense worldwide investment in Win32 apps and businesses worldwide would scream if MS dropped support for it. To their credit MS is well aware of this. Chances are you're using a 64-bit version of Windows at this moment, and its 32-bit Windows subsystem (SysWOW64) is good and seamless enough that you don't even think about it.

At a guess, the fact that the cash cow Microsoft Office is still primarily, and by default, a 32-bit product means that MS must keep supporting Win32 at a high level. I would guess that Win32 support will be excellent as long as any primarily 32-bit version of Office has not reached end-of-life. According to http://www.allyncs.com/docs/lifecyclesupport.html , Office 2016 end-of-life is 2025.10.14. So we can probably expect excellent Win32 support in Windows 10 until then at least.

If you have components that must run on Windows server OSs, that may be a different story. Windows already offers one lightweight version (Nano Server) which is 64-bit only and does not include any Win32 support. It's likely the Windows Server world will drop Win32 support long before the workstation OSs. Or, Win32 support will be a component that can be optionally installed on servers, and in many environments it won't be installed.

2. Windows 10 is the last (known) version of Windows workstation OS. VFP runs mostly OK on it but you're absolutely right that beyond support for Win32 as required for Office and other 32-bit apps MS still sells, they have no obligation to ensure that long-unsupported products like VFP continue to run properly.

I for one found an obscure issue running VFP on Win10, but that can be worked around by coding changes or setting the compatibility level of the VFP EXE to Windows 7.

Of course, there was the SMB2 networking issue introduced with Windows Vista but the consensus seems to be that this can be worked around with manual registry settings for all but the most demanding cases.

On the other hand MS may apply some update to Windows 10 that breaks VFP but leaves Office32 intact. That's worrisome because for the most part it's not possible to prevent Windows updates or otherwise "freeze" Win10 at some build level. In that case the only workaround would be to run VFP in Win7 or Win8.1 VMs, and those OSs won't be available forever either.

Long ago there were some efforts to get VFP to run on the WINE Windows emulator on Linux. That was controversial and MS made it clear it violated license terms to do that. My understanding is WINE has improved and can even run certain Windows games fairly well so it might be technically possible now to run VFP on it if you're willing to ignore licensing issues.

3. Can you plan, fund, and migrate your product to some other platform? In that case your question then becomes, "Will my VFP apps run until I can switch to something else?"

4. Do you need 3rd-party VFP development or support skills? They may get harder to find as existing developers retire or pass away