>Al,
>
>So, what's the proper response, in your mind, to this news?

I have no idea and couldn't care less. Everyone will have their own response; you've seen mine. Pure speculation, as I pointed out.

>I've seen what seems to me to be an awful lot of energy wasted on emotional responses to what is an unknown future at best.

We are all in bed with the 800 lb. MS gorilla. IMO, examination of what that gorilla might do is hardly unwarranted or wasteful.

>I have little or no control over what MSFT does but a lot more over what I do. Since I'm an adult and (hopefully but not quite! *g*) mature it seems to me that the mature response is to simply be prepared for the eventualities. Nothing more, nothing less.

If you think beyond yourself, you start to see the value of warning other people of potential dangers and pitfalls. That's something more I'd do.

>Personally I think VFP will be around for a LONG TIME and that if anything happens development will cease and the product will be on MSFT's shelf until the end of time. For goodness sakes, last time I checked you could still buy MultiPlan from them. There are simply too many people who use this product.
>
I speculated "dead", not "unavailable". I'd have to say Multiplan qualifies as what I'd call a dead product.

>I also wish the VB development team the best of successes, as I do for the VFP dev. team.

Ditto.

>Why would I want to use a less-than-stellar product, regardless of which one it was? VB has some very cool stuff, as does VFP. Just not the same kind of command line/window.

MS in particular, has an unpleasant history of decreeing the "best" technology to use, then pulling the rug out from under those who commit to it. If you want to always use "stellar" technology, you'll be switching from one product to another on an annual basis. Some programmers are good enough to be fully competent in more than one product; I don't count myself amongst them. Simply, those who wish to leverage their existing knowledge, rather than learn a lot of new stuff, will continue to use less-than-stellar products. This is a dangerous attitude in this era of rapid change, but a lot of people have it.

>Best,
>
>DD
>
>>>Of course, they say it will ship next year. That means the end of next year. There's plenty of water that will pass under the bridge between then and now. I'm predicting early problems with VB7 since it's going to be a major overhaul.
>>
>>Take the easy predictions, why dontcha? < g > Any delay to VB7 will be good for VFP, but won't necessarily affect the final outcome. If it really is released at the end of 2001, that will be over 3 full years since the last release of VS... far too long, IMO. Market forces may dictate an earlier release.
>>
>>All those DevCon attendees are going to be annoyed that there will be no new VS rollout for them to play with. "Miami Hotel Bookings take nosedive..."
>>
>>Maybe the VFP team could put any delay to good use by incorporating VFP8 features into VFP7.
>>
>>How about this for a scary thought... "News Flash - VB7 Team Falls Behind on implementing OO Extensions". Where might MS find a small team of talented developers who are expert in implementing robust, OO features, to get them out of their bind?
>>
>>"News Flash - VFP Dev Team seconded to VB Team for VB7 Rollout..."