Hi Markus,

You are right, we will gain nothing. If the DOJ gets it's way, MS will become two companies. One for OS, the other for applications. I'm unclear as to which would get Visual Studio and BackOffice (MTS is obvious; SQL Server is not).

Either way, we're going to get some drift in direction. The Office folks will probably start hawking a Linux version; the Windows folks are going to have the tough time of it....my understanding is that sales of Office are what fund the massive R&D into COM, DNA, and future Windows. And where's big daddy to pay for MSDN, CaSA, and a score of other (assumed) marginal operations or money losers?

Meanwhile, either way, MS will be under a strict order (appeal or not) of what they can do to innovate Windows for 3 years. Meaning AOL, RedHat, Sun, Corel, etc etc are laughing their a**es off because they can run rings around them.

Will VFP survive this? I would think so. OTOH, will our productivity survive it? Doubtful. It may be back to the bad old days when nothing worked well with nothing.