Hi Alex,

I didn't realize that you also posted an announcement about the poll. That's great! You are hereby elevated to the rank of lieutenant. Would you please add an entry about this posting in the list on http://fox.wikis.com/wc.dll?Wiki~WillMicrosoftMarketVFPAnnouncements. It will really help to encourage others to take that kind of initiative. There can hardly be any question that the Spanish postings made by Alex Feldstein and yourself account for a large percentage of the total vote so far.

Now consider what would happen if similar postings were made in some other major languages and regional forums. I doubt very much that this has yet taken place, and if it had, I would want to see entries for those postings in the Announcements page. By including the text of your posting, you may make it easier for another bi-lingual person to figure out what to say in a different language. Until we have reason to think that this sort of broad initial seeding has taken place, I think it would be very premature to be taking the present numbers and extrapolating to anything believable. Also note that there is no indication that the rate of increase in the list has tapered off, and in fact it would still seem to be accelerating. Also see my reply to John Ryan at the bottom of the http://fox.wikis.com/wc.dll?Wiki~OpenLetterBogusCounterArguments page about this strategy.

I think you are making an incorrect assumption if you equate the number of people who have read the message to the number of people who visited the forum. I just fielded a few replies on UT today and yesterday to people who didn't yet know or only just heard about the poll. We should bear in mind that occasional updates to previous notices are required, and we mustn't assume that everybody has clearly gotten the message yet, even on UT.

Another point I would take issue with is the interpretation that those who are opposed to the idea of an open letter chose to say nothing rather than to vote No. That's not how I read it at all. No VFP-er in his right mind would really oppose even considering signing an open letter to MS encouraging them to better promote VFP. Those who didn't vote were simply not yet willing to say that publicly, or they didn't understand the question, or they didn't even know about the poll. My hope is that as the number of names on the list gets large enough, the first category, those with reservations about making the slightest open criticism of MS, however well-founded, will see that they have nothing more to fear. Get it? Let's not push the holdouts too hard right now, because there are vast untapped masses of frustrated VFP programmers out there who will have no such qualms about speaking out, and it will be overwhelmingly in their interest to do so. Based on the results so far, I'd say it's reasonable to conclude that more than 99% of VFP programmers will support this cause, but only if we reach them. There is no other group on earth better equipped to do that than we are, so let's demonstrate how to communicate efficiently by using our ample resources. We aren't going to need extrapolations.

Mike

>Hi Jim and Alex,
>
>From what I've seen so far in the wiki, the only people who bothered to visit (with one exception) were those who were in favor of signing the open letter.
>
>Those who aren't in favor, didn't say "no", they just didn't vote.
>
>With Michel's help, we could get the list of UT members (premier and basic) that have visited the UT since the vote was open and compare the names in the list with the names listed as voting "yes". This will tell us that "out of the x number of developers who read about the vote, y number of developers agreed".
>
>Granted, it won't tell us how many "yes" votes can be projected, but we could probably get the ratio of "yes to no" in the general population. There will be a margin for error, of course, but let the psichics at 1-900-gartner figure that out.
>
>I think that a relative figure would be much more useful in this case (i.e. 33% of vfp users have agreed to sign).
>
>Having a percentual figure gives us a better idea of what things look like, rather than speculating that the 300 yes votes are projectable to 3000, 30,000, or 300,000 users. 3000 votes might sound meager, but there is quite a difference between 3000 out of 200,000 and 3000 out of 5000.
>
>You think Michel could get such a list together? And if so, would he release it?
>
>Hmmmm.... I just had an idea...
>
>I posted a call to vote in a Spanish vfp list that has 152 members and Alex Feldstein did the same in the spanish vfp newsgroup (I don't know how many active members are there; perhaps about the same). I just did a quick count by country and hispanic last name among the list on the wiki (these people are likely to have heard about the vote from AlexF or myself), and there are about 100 names there that meet the criteria.
>
>Based on the above, I can say for sure that AT LEAST 1 out of every 3 developers agrees with signing the open letter.
>
>I think that's heavy enough for Microsoft to take notice.
>
>Alex
>
>>Yes and no Alex,
>>
>>I will be buying it too. But there are, by all accounts, a huge number of FPD/FPW (and probably FB+) apps. out there, most of them still being supported and probably some even expanding.
>>
>>These licenses would have dropped out of sight long ago and I think it is a reasonable guess that many of those practitioners opted to stay away from VFP for a number of reasons. One likely is "VFP is dead".
>>
>>So I see two important points here:
>>1) From the point of view of the vote, tons and tons (my guess is near the 95% level) of FP/VFP people will NOT hear of the vote and so will not cast one. Something must be done to equate the number of actual votes to the number of probable votes that would have been cast IF ALL HAD HEARD ABOUT IT AND COULD HAVE VOTED. Right now, for instance, we can estimate that 1 in around 300 would vote NO. My guess is that one vote HERE (Wiki) is worth 1000 VFP licenses.
>>
>>2) If MS markets VFP and always and forcefully rebuts any "last version" rumours and tells their OWN people (especially those who talk to the public) to acknowledge VFP as a 'mainstream product' then there is potential for lots of the FPD/FPW holdouts to make the move as well as attracting brand new programmers.
>>
>>Cheers,
>>
>>JimN
>>
>>>Jim,
>>>
>>>The question of how many use VFP will be moot soon as MS will have an easy way to measure the profitability of VFP: How many upgrades are sold, how many new licenses. I won't curse the darkness, I plan to give a new VFP7 license to a nephew.
>>>
>>>Alex