>Dear Alex and all:
>
>I was talking to a Foxpro devloper yesterday at lunch about information sharing not only among colleagues but among competitors and he had a surprising take on the issue. I wonder what other opinions on this might be?
>
>I asked him whether he would give programming help to someone who he knew to be in an enterprise that was a direct competitor. (I noticed
>that on the UT site, there is a picture of the person and the company name.)
>
>After some thoughtful moments, he said, "It depends, but probably yes". His reason was that he would clearly not give away "the crown jewels" of any proprietary work he was doing, but he has seen situations in his company where help given to a competitor has opened doors to beneficial partnering later on.
>
>How do others feel about this?

If I can help someone I will. If I know that the person is a direct competitor I won't mind as long as the question is related to VFP in general or any other question related to computers.