>>>Let us have a vote on UT to determine how many members support funding the promotion of VFP. We have to start somewhere. If we cannot be seen as a united front then no one will take us serious. The promotion of VFP is critical to our continued business as independent developers. If we can't sell fox to prospective clients then we should start learning VB. Give Fox a push... a real push...lets start now have a vote and live by results.
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>>Patrick,
>>What kind of promotion do you mean? Our job is to write applications, work on projects and so on. When me, you or someone else does his/her job, writing good application, finishing solid project etc.- this is called promotion.
>>There is, as it was already mentioned, one more important point. This forum is already promoting VFP and it does it good enough for 3 years. How it promotes it? When someone, especially novice in Foxpro, comes here, s/he get many basic advices how to use this product, but if this novice would log on UT during some 'I will die for...' thread it might be the last time s/he does it.
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>Edward,
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>There's no doubt, VFP has a strong db engine and a language which allows you to simulate C/S systems with better than C/S system performance. But there are major problems with VFP: No native code compiler, no reliable native db repair utility, and no free multi-threading. Three years ago, applications could get by without these. But expectations have increased significantly in the last few years.
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>No amount of promotion exists out there that can hide the above limitations. And, MS will never give VFP these abilities. They certainly don't want to lose their SQL Server Client License market share. There are more C++ and VB programmers and a lot of new applications are being designed for the Web with heavy emphasis on Java which at least has multi-threading capability.
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>Also, employment opportunities abound for C++, VB and Java programmers. VFP is generally frowned upon here in Canada.

Asif,
Actually, I did not argue about issues you decided to raise here. I know about problems VFP has, and IMO it's mostly marketing issues, though I admit that this is serious, probably even more serious than possible technical issues, just because I can fight technical problems and cannot fight marketing walls. If you expect me to comment on things you mentioned, I could, but it would be really repetition of the same song, too many times. VFP is my favourite tool, I use it for many projects, for many years, and I will use it for many years (by software world terms) more, but my life (as programmer too) will not finish if/when VFP will disappear from markets.