>>Although, I don't know how that affects MS, because according to Calvin Hasia MS looses money on ALL language/development products.
>>
>
>You must have heard wrong, this is an incorrect statement. Microsoft does profit from Visual Studio, FoxPro, etc.

Nope... I am pretty sure he said they loose money. His explaination was that it cost an average of $250 per support call for MS... and they provide on average one free support call for each product (license) they ship. Combine that with the cost to develop the product, and they loose money on development languages.

He also said that, since MS uses the languages to develop products that do make money, like Office, Windows, Back Office and IE, they figure they might as well sell them to try to recover some of those costs.

Now... that is what I heard Calvin say last year (98) at Devcon... you are welcome to ask him about it, since I am sure you have more contact with him than I do.

BOb

PS: I didn't really believe that MS would do something that looses them money for so long.