Here's THE idea to guarantee VFP 8.0 and 9.0

When VS7 and VFP7 are released don't buy VS.

Buy two upgrades to VFP7 (it is tax deductable for most of us, after all).

In theory MS will see upgrade sales double over VFP6. Incentive enough to start on VFP8 and plan for VFP9. Either that, or it will encourage MS to add a VFP language engine with the MS data engine to future releases of VB/VS (VS, we all assume, will become the mother of all development environments sometime soon...).