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>How can you compare Coke to Microsoft? Has Coka-Cola ever been prosecuted for forcing vendors to carry Coke instead of Pepsi? Has this issue ever been brought up against Coke?

As a matter of fact, yes. Coca-Cola has been sued by several colleges because of their exploitative tactics in getting cafeteria and concession stand placement of their products, and Coca-cola has been involved in more than one lawsuit where they have cancelled advertising contracts with some schools becuase the college bookstore and vending machines carried Pepsi products as well as Coke.
But that is not the point of this message, as you will see...

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>I still agree with John that all of this Angst should be geared toward the VFP team instead of the non VFP users. That's my opinion, obviously not yours.

I wasn't going to get involved in this thread, but I want my opinion to be heard. The fact that this website exists at all should be a testament to the idea of promoting Visual FoxPro, independent of Microsoft. You don't see MS closing down this site, or shutting down VFUG, or forcing FoxPro Advisor to cease publishing thier magazine.

All of this is a form of advertising, or at the very least, cheap promotional campaigns, which are not paid for by Microsoft, are not explicitly endorsed by Microsoft, have an infinite number of references to Microsoft products and technologies, yet are allowed to continue to exist, and thrive, without any noticable involvement from Microsoft.

Look at the recent entertainment media. Viewers of a popular television program paid money out of their pockets to publish an ad in Variety, asking the producers to continue producing the show. Fans of a famous Broadway actor did the same thing to ask the producers of a move based on this actor's most famous role to consider HIM for the role instead of another actor. In a number of instances, the users and aficionados or a product or service have waged a grass-roots campaign to ensure that the object of ther attention coninues to be in existence, and perhaps to gain the product some notariety among the general public in the process.

Is the idea of a user-financed advertisement or a user advocacy group, existing independent of Microsoft but with the intent of promoting Microsoft's products among the computer community at large, so very different?

Bill Yater
MCP, VFP 3.0