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http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/filters/bursts/0,3422,2378903,00.htmlI posted the following to ZDnet as commentary on their article:
I've been an MVP for a relatively short time, since August of this year, and I'm disappointed that MS is discontinuing the MVP program. I'm one of the VFP MVPs, and have operated from Michel Fournier's Universal Thread rather than the official MS newsgroups.
There's genuine concern among the user population of UT about the effects of discontinuing the MVP program. MS has had little or no visible presense on UT, and the MVPs, and a number of the non-MVP membership, have carried the burden of supporting a large international community of developers and users very well. A remarkably large percentage of the VFP MVPs have been very active in answering questions, finding workarounds, and generally extending on the support provided by Microsoft's product services people. The same is true on many other VFP-oriented conferences, list servers and on-line forums.
The time spent supporting, developing add-ons and extensions for, and documenting VFP is astonishing - some people address hundreds of inquiries a month. There's a considerable pool of knowledge in the VFP user community, and at least in part, the MVP program's recognition of a handfull of developers who spend time in the trenches making VFP comprehensible to the less-experienced users has provided some incentive for extended participation.
FoxPro has a long tradition of peer support, going back to its earliest, pre-Microsoft days. The user community at least in part sees the VFP MVPs as a recognition of the 'best of the best' in the developer community when it comes to making VFP accessible and understandable to others.
The MVP award has no other equivalent in the MS world - the MCP certification recognizes a developer's understanding of the basics of the environment, while the MVPs are the people who understand the product so well that they can make it comprehensible to other developers and who've put something into making the VFP user community viable.
Microsoft, by withdrawing their recognition of the MVPs in all of their product lines seems to be denying the validity of the self-supporting user communities. In VFP's case, the staff of truly knowledgable Microsoft PSS personnel are likely to be inundated with additional support requirements that, until now, have been handled in the user community. The expense from an increase in PSS's burden of support probably will exceed Microsoft's cost of providing the ~50 VFP MVPs with the recognition of their unique contribution to the product's viability.
That being said, it's unlikely that most of the MVPs will leave the user community on its own - places like UT will continue to thrive as long as they can support themselves financially, and the MVPs who participate there remain willing to slog it out in the trenches without formal recognition. VFP's user community is fairly tight-knit, and as long as sites like the UT can remain financially viable and the core of the MVP community is willing to do the work without the recognition, there will always be someplace to go for quick answers from people who slug it out with the product on a daily basis.
Perhaps Microsoft will be willing to rethink their position, and will re-establish the MVP program, or provide some other means of recognizing the people who give so much time to the user community. I hope so. FWIW, I'll still be on UT, just like I was before I was nominated as an MVP.
