>http://www.dbase.com
>
>has anyone any experience with the modern dBase? seeing as that MS insists on avoiding direct answers as to how long VFP will still be receiving it's meagre attention, i thought it would be interesting to revisit something where they have a publicly stated long term commitment to product development.
>
>john
Naturally dBase, Inc. would be committed to development of their only product and their only reason to exist. I suppose that Inprise spun them off because they lacked that commitment.

I see two ways of looking at their open source initiative:

1) They are courageously embracing a bold new product development paradigm that will prove superior.
2) They realize that they lack the resources to develop a competitive product and desperately hope that others will care enough to do some of the work for free.

The page that has "A personal note from AAK" (whoever he is) describes his comparison of some version of dBase with other products including some version of Visual FoxPro. The only specific complaint he mentions about VFP (in an admittedly brief essay) was the fact that the code behind forms isn't available all in one window. Is that all? Well no. Also, in general, he is saying that Visual dBase has an easier learning curve than the others, but still has inheritance.