>>What I can't understand is why someone's status within the community should make a difference to you. We've known each other in this forum for at least a couple of years and I've come to know you as a highly intelligent individual, who is perfectly capable of making rational, well-thought out decisions about something like this. In short, keeping your own counsel, is, more often than not a wise decision. If you have questions about something, you ask them or ask to confirm your decision. Further, Bruce, it's your tool as well as those other "prominent people". You opinion should matter no more, nor less than theirs.
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>Hey, George - sorry, been away. My point was more that I didn't know many of the letter's early originators, so lacked some confidence in the effort. But, eventually I recognized more & more persons that had become involved, and gained enough confidence to support whatever end-product comes about. So, it's not so much "status" as it is "familiarity" (although there's certainly some correlation between the two).
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>Everyone *should* be ambivalent about moving out from under the VS roof, and I might add that "conflicted" is more my choice in wording. But, being in VS did not appear to be helping vfp as much as we hoped (and back to that old marketing problem). And with the .NET emphasis, vfp didn't mesh well, no one will dispute that. The new path for vfp has an uncertain future, but I think it already had that status anyway, so what else is new? :-)
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>I think it's VB that has the most uncertain future right now, anyway. There are absolutely zero plans to use .NET here, the VB/VC++ people will continue with VS6 for the foreseeable future. In that sense, vfp may actually come out ahead in this move, as those of us that use vfp6 plan to move to 7 fairly quickly, and are quite content that it's an "incremental" upgrade. That's what we want right now, not major upheavals that'll cause re-learns and re-writes.
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>>If someone were to ask me, "Are you a FoxPro programmer", I'd answer, "No, I'm a programmer. I happen to currently be working in FoxPro". Or, to paraphrase JVP, "I am not my tool".
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>Similar here, though I stretch it a little further: I'm a statistician who happens to program as my principle job duty, I currently happen to use primarily vfp to get my work done, and there's always plenty of work. Though I do nothing but tech work, there are reasons I keep my statistical hat on - more pay is one, but most importantly I have FREEDOM with this hat, almost like an independent consultant where I am. People come to me for design/production work because they hate going through IT. I've actually had decent occasional offers from the IT people, but I wouldn't want to work under some of the idiots in IT, where I might get stuck doing some work I really did not like, and under people I would not be happy working for. Okay, enough ramble for now...

Glad you're back, Bruce.

I think the thing that bothered me was folks placing more value is one person's name over another's. Afterall, this is an expression of opinion, and we're each entitled to our own. Simply basing an opinion based on the fact that this person or that says so, ultimately does a disservice to one's self.

I think the most serious question here isn't whether or not Microsoft will market VFP. Rather it's, "Will Microsoft market VFP within Microsoft and its representatives?" How many times have we heard about instances where, in a perfectly natural environment for it, VFP either hasn't been mentioned, mentioned just briefly, or put down at conferences and events by people representing Microsoft. Far too often.

Microsoft can't control what people like the Gartner Group say, but it can, or better should be able, to control what its representatives say.