>>I don't see the sense in asking whether VFP should be in VS.NET, whatever that means, when the infinitely more important question of Microsoft's promotion of VFP remains at best unanswered. If the VFP community is going to give some constructive feedback to Microsoft, let's not put the cart before the horse. Why not draft an open letter to MS making the case to management for giving VFP fair shot at making them some money. Or do you think this would be a futile exercise? If so, I think that debating whether VFP should be in VS.NET is even more pointless.
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>>I'm not convinced that this is a lost cause, however, because Microsoft isn't completely dumb, and I think there really is a good business argument to be made. It will fall on the shoulders of the VFP community to persuade Microsoft not the blow it, and most of us have neither the time nor the inclination to get too personally involved in this. I'll bet that many VFP supporters who don't have the time to join in the discussion would be willing to endorse an open letter to Microsoft, but only if we make it easy for them. Those of you with the energy to be involved in discussions like this one would do us all a great service by assisting in the drafting of such a letter. The rest of you can at least indicate a willingness to consider signing such a letter by posting a brief reply to this message, even if only to say "I think this is a waste of time, and please don't ask me to say anything more about it".
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>After much thought, I came to the same conclusion that whether or not VFP is in the VS box is fairly inconsequential. If there were some actual marketing going on, I might feel differently, but that isn't happening. At least in the box, we get some exposure. I also think that being in the box encourages VFP to work well with the other tools. I don't necessarily want integration with the IDE or CLR, but just to play nice with the other languages.
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>As far as an open letter, I would probably sign it. But I believe it might be a futile effort. We have been complaining openly about VFP marketing for years, including comments made in the Fox magazines, to no avail. I don't know why Microsoft would start marketing VFP now, especially when .NET takes their strategy even further away.
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>Here's another thought: Perhaps the Fox team does get to decide how much of their budget goes towards marketing. If that were the case, would we want to take money away from development to concentrate on better advertising? I don't know. It may be a good time to do just that.

Hi Joel,

Thanks for your reply. I'm satisfied that you would consider signing a letter, even if you're not optimistic about its accomplishing anything. I can't say that I disagree with you, but I don't see any more promising alternatives. If more people simply went to far as to make a qualified endorsement such as yours, it might inspire me to take a stab at the first draft of this letter, unless someone else beats me to it (which is fine by me).

As to your suggestion that we might encourage the Fox team to concentrate on better advertising, sure, I agree that something is seriously missing in that department. But I think it would be a mistake to direct our energies at the Fox team, in whom I have every confidence. The target has to be Microsoft upper management - the guys who set the budget for both FoxPro development and marketing. Has anyone ever heard Bill Gates utter the word "FoxPro"? They own the damned thing. Is there a legitimate business argument for taking FoxPro more seriously? I think this can and should be put into the kind of terms that management can understand. If we spell it out for them and add a few thousand signatures, it might just have some impact.