>> I found the discussion interesting and think that Rick raised very good points, and all the mockery and disdain of the answers I found very... intolerant.

How ungrateful people are not to express delight when accused of being crooks, or subjected to repetitive know-all scolding from somebody who see-saws from "I forgot VFPA exists and have no intention of using it" to "I want to use it, but I'm too moral, unlike you."

The most relevant legal advice is that legal action involving a corporate with a legal department always involves losses, even if you win. I have no appetite for US court activity. None, and wouldn't even wish it on an enemy.

The telling point is that if I ever were to risk such an encounter with MS, I'd do it along the lines of "if somebody were to fix bugs in the VFP runtimes- e.g. tooltips in grids or queries against SQL Server field types like VARCHAR MAX ... would MS object?" There's no need to tattle on others if all you want is an answer.

FWIW, MS does know and accept bug fixes and functionality enhancements in products covered by EULA. Apart from Refox that I referred to earlier since it relies on reverse-engineered VFP internals and runtime patches in one of its options, check out the experience with Office Equation Editor in 2018. Rather than fixing an overflow issue, MS used Patch Tuesday to remove Equation Editor dependencies to stop it working,... after which a Slovenian third party stepped in and delivered a fix to great acclaim. According to the third party's CEO, they saw no legal issue in fixing the issue even after MS acted to prevent use of its product rather than simply neglecting it like VFP. And yet no suggestion of illegality including from MS. Perhaps those who think otherwise might bless the Equation Editor forums with their presence rather than confining all their public service to this forum.