Hey guys, have you ever thought that the problem with VFP is the _perception_ that MS is about to extinguish it? Even some of the leading insiders seem to buy into this notion. MS has denied this repeatedly since acquiring FoxPro, but we all know what MS's believability rating is.

Of course they're going to market where the money is; and they're pushing toward the ASP subscription model for all software, over the internet. That's what .NET is about. It occurs to me that developer tools stick around because developers use them. Period. Cobol and Fortran are still around because people need them. Maybe WE need to take ourselves out of a niche market thinking and focus on trumpeting our own accomplishments. MS is not going to market VFP aggresively -- even open letters won't get them to do it. But perhaps consortiums of developers could begin to an awareness campaign, which MS might join to partiallyn support. AFter all, a lot of mission critical apps are written in VFP (JFAST for the US Military, Scheduling for the Euro Tunnel, to mention two that come to mind).

I don't have much money for marketing; I but few of us do. But I'd be willing to join a consortium to pool our resources and mount an awareness campaign. I think, IMHO, that would be more effective than an open letter to MS.

Just a thought.

Bob Ohrstedt
bob@rjohrstedt.net