This is all well and nice, but the really important question is:

Who slept in the bunk beds last night?

>It's not a done deal by any stretch of the imagination. Ok, let me back up a little bit and explain where this comes from a little bit...
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>Ricardo Wenger and Randy Brown from the Fox Team at Microsoft were at our VFE DevCon in Vegas in December (and you were noticeably absent) and Toni and I had lunch with them one day. During lunch I brought this subject up and mentioned that I'd discussed it with a few other people in the community as well. They were interested, listened, participated in the conversation, etc. BUT at no point did they ever indicate that this was something they were considering in-house. One of them mentioned in passing during the course of the conversation that it sounds like several of the "gurus" are thinking about this and they wondered what the community would think. I took it upon myself to find out. They didn't ask me to find out, and as far as I know their interest in this is nothing more than a curiosity. There's nothing more to it than that. I’m not a Microsoft lackey and if they had actually asked me to do this I would’ve told them “why don’t you ask yourself?”
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>All of that being said, I do intend to report back what is said here and on the Wiki to Microsoft. If it turns out that the community thinks this should happen, they will listen just like they have always listened to us about enhancement requests, exams, etc. Listening does not equal action and if we as a community decided that we did think it was a good idea to pull VFP out of VS it doesn't mean that it's going to happen.
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>As far as VFP7 and VS.NET go, I think VFP7 looks like a redheaded stepchild in the VS box more than ever before. When you look at what they've done to the IDE, what they've done with VB and C# and then you look at what hasn't happened to VFP, I think it looks worse than ever. Now, when I look at VFP by itself and most of the applications my customers and I develop and compare it to VS.NET, VFP kicks its ass, or as Calvin Hsia would say, “FoxPro Rocks!”
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>Regardless of whether or not VFP stays in the box, are we going to see VFP marketed properly? Hell No! For whatever reason, MS has decided it's not a strategic product. I'd bet that MS has already spent more on VS.NET marketing than it's ever spent on VFP and VS isn't even out yet. The same goes for development dollars. If it stays in the box are we going to see it ripped to shreds in the VS reviews - the ones that bother to mention it? Hell yes! The reviews will all be about what VFP7 doesn't have vs. what it does have.
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>I do have customers that sort of stumbled across VFP because it was in VS and the potential loss of new VFP developers like that is really my only concern about taking VFP out of the box. As far as customers, companies, etc. choosing a development platform goes, I don't think the argument that VFP is a part of VS is going to hold water anymore, whether or not it's in the box. If I'm approached to develop an app for which I think VFP is best suited and forced to justify it, I'd rather say "Microsoft offers an alternative to VS.NET that I think is a better, more cost-effective solution for your application."
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>If VFP is ready right now, I think the best scenario is to ship it stand-alone and leave it in the VS box when VS ships.
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>The reality of it is, and again, this is solely my opinion, MS does not want new VFP developers. They want new .NET developers and they're not going to give the Fox team a bunch of money to help them achieve something contradictory to their long-term goals. They're also not going to spend much on marketing VFP as part of VS.NET either. They only keep VFP around to pacify us until they figure out what they have to do to migrate us into their other tools or until the community is small enough to be deemed insignificant. Who knows, when VS.NET ships they might have done enough to migrate a lot of us. I think Calvin, Randy, etc. are the only thing that really keeps VFP going. I think Calvin gets a lot of personal satisfaction by continuing to add just the right features that keep us in VFP. I think this probably frosts some people at Microsoft that aren't on the Fox team too.
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>I don't hold out any hopes of VFP getting into the CLR for VFP8 or beyond.
>All of that being said, I think either way, we're way better off than the VB community. VFP7 is backwards compatible and doesn't represent monumental change from VFP5 or VFP6. VB.NET is not backward compatible with VB6, which basically means VB6 apps are dead and VB as the VB community knows it is dead. The leap from VB6 to VS.NET is much larger than the leap from FoxPro 2.6 to VFP IMO.
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>As for F1, and myself, we continue to think VFP is viable and that it is a sound choice as a development tool. I don’t have any reservations about developing applications in VFP or about recommending VFP as a development tool. After all, I am married to a redheaded stepchild and I employ another that’s a very close friend of mine.
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>Is now the time to migrate from VFP to VS.NET? I really don’t think so. The product isn’t out yet and when it comes out, everything included in it will be a 1.0 version despite whatever the about boxes say. I’d hate to think where I’d be right now if I listened to the people that said VFP was dead when VS 6 came out. What if my crystal ball told me that J++ was the future? What if it said that VB6 was the future? J++ is obviously dead and VB.NET isn’t really much like VB6 at all. I’d be absolutely livid if I’d wasted significant amounts of time or money on either of these products.
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>I don't think we've seen the last of VFP and I don't think the majority of applications are ready to be a .NET solution. I can sleep a lot better at night telling my customers to go with something that meets their needs now, will be around in the future, is fast and stable, is shipping and that I know the next release will run their applications without change.
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>I do see that changing in the future and am looking very closely at C# and ASP.NET. Maybe by .NET 2.0 (or .NET 1.0 SP?) we'll do most of our work in these technologies, but for the time being, we're focusing on Fox and where it makes the most sense to integrate with the new technology in .NET. The jury is still out as to whether or not .NET will actually work and if companies will be ready to adapt it. In the long-term, I’m betting that it does and that when it does, C# will be the language of choice.