Hello, John.

If Microsoft were simply a manufacturer, in which the cost accounting was simply (units X price)-cost, then your analysis might carry some weight.

However, there is another, entirely different way of analysing the importance of VFP to MS.

Scenario 1)
MS sells an individual developer (you or me, for instance) a copy of VS for about $400 every two years. With that investment, we can produce several monolithic applications, and make a comfortable living doing so. Our customers buy computers from Dell which come pre-installed with Windows, and _maybe_ the customer buys an OS upgrade every 3 years or so, figure 50 computers times maybe $50 net to MS. If our customer chooses to use Corel Suite and Netware, this is the total revenue stream from a sale of VS to a VFP developer.

Scenario 2)
MS sells VS enterprise to a Solution Provider with 3 sales people, 3 office and support staff, and 6 developers, plus the owner and two top executives. They churn out applications that require not only their skills in developing applications using VB, but SQL/Server design and programming, and if they're riding the web wave, JScript, VBScript, VID and probably some network configuration as well. For each app that this company sells, MS sells at least one copy of NT/Server, and probably the entire backoffice suite, with a 50-user license. I'm not sure what the current licensing is, but I think this would put an average of about $10,000 into MS's coffers for _every_ app this company sells! Figure this company does 2 major and a half-dozen minor apps each year, and MS is looking at a revenue stream (over two years) of maybe $150,000, plus all the money that the SP makes (enough to support 3 execs, 3 sales people, 3 support and 6 developers). If you throw in site licensing for MS Office, throw in some more money.

I participated in a round table with Robert Green a few years ago, before he went to work for MS, and he made the comment that "VFP is not strategic to Microsoft". When I look at things from the standpoint of all the add-on sales that are required for the typical n-tier component-based application, for both MS and a development team, I begin to understand that VFP isn't strategic (in most cases) for either MS or the larger multi-person development shop.

When I look at things this way, it surprises me that MS is still supporting and advancing VFP! *BG*

>I have heard 500,000 VFP users too so 200,000 "upgrading" users could be conservative. Still, it would be a strong sales channel into Visual Studio, if thats the only source of upgrades for VFP. I couldn't make the wildest guess as to the numbers of VS packages sold or total cost levels, but feel the cost burden of ongoing VFP development would be minimal so why ever drop it from VS ?

>>-Steve->>