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>>You've now stated the reason that I won't release anything as shareware, and why the classes that I post have less functionality than what I use for my production environment. I don't want the headaches.
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>I simply don't believe that keeping you're own source code of some classes protected would benefit you're business. I've lots of custom classes and I freely give them to some colleages to play with them. They may add some improvements which would be a benefit to yourself. If i don't spread my classes all my colleages would be busy reinventing the wheel. Of cource i won't give them source code of whole commercial deployed programs but i think you can improve you're business by thinkinh this way. One good example is the LINUX OS.
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Call it selfish; call it a reason to hire me as a consultant. I've developed a lot of code, mostly wrappers on APIs, classes that shield VFP app developers from constantly being aware of the low-level underpinnings of my setup and configuration management environmet and the like. I've discussed the theory behind a lot of what I do to manage installation and ongoing configuration and installation management. My clients have gotten the benefit of the development I've done, implementing application hives, distributed upgrade implementation, network configuration and station management. I've looked at releasing some of the toolkits on a shareware basis; my experience with shareware in the past has been that it never covered the cost of what I had to do to support it. So I release what I'm willing to give away, and use my tools to make solid environments for my apps, and for my clients' applications. Most of the companies hiring me these days are large firms with a product that they need to put in place in both turnkey and software-only environments, supporting a wide range of networks. What I develop for them are installation strategies and configuration management tools - the mechanisms to distribute software upgrades without having to visit each station and apply all the patches; modify the location of an application and alter all the shortcuts for all the stations involved, create generic distirbution sets that can be used to create a truly site-specific implementation, and then as component upgrades are released, ensure that the necessary changes to existing data in the field, software components and configuration adjustments get applied.

I'm perfectly happy to help someone with advice and some support code, and there's plenty of stuff that I give away, but I'm not willing to either try to make a canned commercial product out of it, or to release stuff that's so complex that there's no chance of someone figuring it out without a lot of help. A fair percentage of the people who've played with CLSHEAP and API_APPRUN have needed some help figuring them out, and they're easy, hiding most of the gory details from the exposed surfaces of the classes. The idea of releasing them as source was so that once the functionality exposed by the class was used, you could go under the hood and play around. I'm thrilled to death to get someone saying 'Hey - I like what it does; here's something that could make it better!' That kind of feedback and cooperation gives me warm fuzzies, and results in enhancements to the code. I get infinitely discouraged when, after releasing it, I get a message saying "Hey - since you figured this out, figure out how to make it do what I want it to do." The idea was to first make some functionality available, and to explain how it works; to serve as a springboard for someone to delve into a couple of areas that I find absolutely fascinating, process and memory management.

>We can get VFP a real popular programming tool if we all think this way. When i look in the files section of the UT I see that i'm not standing alone for this matter.
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>When i get shareware I know that I may not distribute the software, in this case there is no direct and clear statement that it is prohibited. When you're not clear about this issues, you're asking for copying your programs. For example: I like to use ARJ for compression of files, i may use this for my own personal purposes, but when i want to used it in one or more of my programs i've to get a licence for distribution. This is clearly stated in the ARJ utility.
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Everything I release here on UT I release as PD code - you're free to use it; I ask that you at least give some attribution of the source in your comments in code. Microsoft gives us the source for various wizards, and contrary to common belief, does clearly indicate what can and cannot be redistributed in the REDIST.TXT file. The best of the third-party tools that I've used, things like SDT, MaxFrame Pro, the late Tom Rettig's TRO, all came with source, not only for what you were intended to put into your application, but also for the tools used to help put things together to build your app. These vendors put some restrictions on redistributing some of the tools that they provide. I appreciate having the code to play with, and am more than happy to comply with their wishes about redistribution. They didn't have to provide us with the source to the tools, but they felt that making that code available to the developers who paid for it that much more useful, and served as a guide to what really went on in the guts of the product.

>>As a fellow developer, I'd ask you to rethink your position, if for no other reason than to prevent Microsoft feeling a need to not give us source code to the wizards in the next release. They might decide it's easier to reduce the usefulness of the wizards than to litigate.
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>MicroSoft should give use a clear and direct statement that it may not be used for distribution, but then again nothing would stop me from copying some or all functionality and rewrite it.
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Take a look at REDIST.TXT; it clarifies many of the issues about what Microsoft feels that you can and cannot redistribute with your application.

>MS tends to summarize things we can distrubute, but really should summarize the things we may not distribute in a direct and clear manner.
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>I hope i did clarify myself in my standpoint,
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>Regards,
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>Walter