There's one simple solution to all of that: put the old DOS stuff in the public domain.

Michelle




>>The standard answer is usually to contact MS about their downgrade program. >But I'm hearing from people that a lot of the Fox for DOS stuff is no longer >available.
>
>MSFT no longer supports it, so the availability is limited to what's still on the shelf in the warehouse.
>
>>Considering the amount of legacy code people are supporting, I think it's
>>pretty sad that it's so hard to get these old programs. How can you be out of
>>stock on _software_? The manuals, I can see, but what's so hard about making
>>a copy of a disk and sending it out?
>
>You know it's not as simple as that.
>
>(oMikeStew.SpeaksForMSFT = .f. && Read-only property that's always .f.)
>
>Software isn't copied onto a disk, it's manufactured, like anything else you buy. Even if you have someone slap a couple of disks into a drive and copy some bits is going to be more expensive than you probably think. There is a process to shipping disks, and having someone copy bits to diskettes as a one-off deal breaks that process. Breaking the process costs money, and usually lots of it. IOW, it's probably cost-prohibitive for MSFT make new 2.x disks for such a low-volume run.
>
>There's probably a legal aspect to it as well. MSFT no longer supports anything older than VFP 3.0. But if MSFT is still selling it, it could be argued that they have to support it. That's just my guess, anyway; I'm no lawyer.