Tom,

>>>My conclusion: it's another sop. No effort will be made to reach business decisionmakers who are the ones who need targeting. Instead they'll target us and VB people who have no clout or effect on perception of the product.
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>>Isn't this premature speculation considering the product hasn't even been released yet?
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>John;
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>Glad to have you in my time zone. Hope you enjoy your new position and are soon together with your family.
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>This thread reminds me of the rats on the Titanic. There were two groups of rats – one stating that the ship could not be sunk and the other group stating “get ready to bail out of here – just in case”. Seems like an analogy between rats on the Titanic and Visual FoxPro developers. The truth is we will not know until it happens and in the mean time we can speculate – for what that is worth (zilch or 0).
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>I think we all agree that we would like to see some positive moves by Microsoft towards “introducing” Visual FoxPro into the business world. Somehow I feel some progress will be made towards this dream but I reserve the right to use other development tools.
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>Tom


I think folks tend to view this from the perspective of their general outlook on life. I'm in the camp of the hopelessly optimistic who have taken a few hard knocks. That is, I am very positive in my presumptions on the future of VFP but I will never allow myself to be in a place where I cannot go to another product should I need to.

Others seem to see nothing but bad news all the time. That strikes me as being equally as unrealistic as those who see nothing but good. Life's just not like that and I dare say neither is software.

You and I were just reminiscing about Wordstar yesterday. Where is it today? However are people precluded from electronically composing words as a result of Wordstar's demise? Hardly. There are more and better choices now than then.

I suspect that the desktop data management arena is exactly the same. There will always be a product 'out there' to meet the need as there will alwys be a need.

Ergo - nothing to get all worked up over.

Cripes, the way some folks in "The Sky is Falling" emotional camp carry on you'd think that should VFP fail that this was a Biblical sign of the End. <g>

People need to remember that it is the skills inside of them that give value, not the tool they wield.

And besides.. Take the worst-case scenario. VFP 7 ships and the development team shuts down as MSFT declares, "No more VFPs".

So.. How many years worth of work will we be able to get out of VFP7? I'd say about 4-4 and that's plenty of time to find the next best desktop data management software.

I do NOT think that this is the case. We already know that VFP8 is in planning for one for example.

But.. Logic never does much good against emotion... <g>