>Michael:
>
>Just to set the record straight, I love the Fox. Period. I have used and developed with it since V.1 and it keeps me and my family very comfortable indeed.
>
>Every where I have looked recently, I see your valiant attempts to push the Fox community into pushing M$ to market VFP. It just strikes me that if you put the same energy/effort into learning another tool or language as you have put in to your marketing crusade, you may not feel half as threated about the exagerated, premature rumours of the anticipated demise of our beloved package?

Hi Gary,

I'm not so worried about the imminent demise of VFP as I am about the evaporation of the VFP job market. Maybe you didn't see some recent UT threads about this, but I can tell you that my perusal of the current employment situation in the Boston area definitely confirms that VFP has shrunk dramatically in the past three years, both in absolute and relative terms. This was previously discussed in http://fox.wikis.com/wc.dll?Wiki~WillMicrosoftMarketVFP_HowItStarted.

There are plenty of us still working, but it doesn't take much foresight to see the consequences of a vanishing job market and its ripple effect. Since VFP is such a great tool for getting the job done, what happens when it's time to move on to the next job? Within the VFP community there seems to be a complacency, because we know VFP is a great tool and MS tells us everything's going to be fine. To the rest of the world it seems obvious that VFP is headed for nowhere-land, and MS has given us precious little ammunition to counter that perception.

The effort I've put into this campaign is miniscule compared to the years I've invested in learning VFP. I don't expect to develop a comparable degree of mastery of another language in less than a year, and there simply isn't any other language that comes close to VFP in power and convenience. I'd just as soon not have to give another thought about VFP marketing, except that I find it too difficult to ignore what now seems to be obvious and irrefutable. The emperor has no clothes. It's no longer possible to believe that Microsoft ever will market VFP if they fail to do it now. They can't justify investing in a product they're not trying to sell. Who are we kidding?

I'm not broadcasting a message of gloom and doom here, because I still hold out a small hope for the salvation of VFP. This wily beast has managed to survive on scraps for quite a while, and I expect it to hold out for a good while longer even if it's mortally wounded. Let's not forget the devoted Multics die-hards who managed to hang on for 15 years after their favorite operating system was explicitly terminated in 1985. That's not the scenario I want for VFP, but my every instinct tells me that we've got to act quickly and decisively to avoid it. This isn't just any old time. The economy is not in a forgiving mood and VFP's removal from VS.NET, however justified, is a first order PR disaster that requires swift damage control, because the VFP job market has nothing left to surrender.

I believe there's still a chance of VFP's surviving this non-marketing crisis if we collectively acknowledge the problem and resolve to do something about it, pronto. Maybe you don't see things in such an urgent light, but unless you completely dismiss the conclusions voiced by a few hundred VFP programmers, why not take one more small step to join us?

Mike