Hi Mike,

Very well put.

Thanks,

Ken


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>Whether or not VFP "continues" is not a binary choice, it's a matter of degree. There's a quality of life issue here. Your suggestion that the continuation of a commercial product is independent of marketing is unconventional and unpersuasive, to say the least.
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>It puzzles me that you should ask Allan what he is going to do, as if you failed to realize how much he has already done. When Allan speaks, it warms the cockles of my heart. I can't tell you how great it is to hear those kinds of sincere affirmations coming from many others as well. The people who have taken the trouble of speaking out like Allan have done ten times as much as anyone had any reason to expect of them.
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>You, on the other hand, have done less than nothing by advocating a "call to inaction". You profess to be logical, and yet you produce nothing but a series of tired fallacies.
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>This isn't a battle between those who believe FoxPro is dying and those who don't. The question isn't whether the future is preordained, or that we should presume to know it. The question is simply whether we would consider asking Microsoft, openly, to do a better job of marketing VFP. Could we ask less of you? Does it make sense to ask anything less of Microsoft? Is this too much to ask?
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>Let's dispense with the "Microsoft knows what we want" argument once and for all. Yes, they know, but do they care enough to do anything about it. That's the issue. At some point, you've really got to wonder how they can resist, and it all comes down to numbers. The way I see it, there are a lot of FoxPro programmers who believe strongly enough in this to say so. Maybe I'm wrong, but there's not much harm in giving it a try. Yes, we'll continue striving to be excellent in everything we do, but the rest of us will also do this one thing more.
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>Does the risk of losing our "competitive advantage" by speaking out justify remaining silent? It's doubtful that we could, by any deliberate action, do more damage to VFP than Microsoft has already done by its inaction. And please, let's not go back to the irrelevant topic of "monies spent", because the most important things in this case, like their own newsletters, are free. This is not a question of marketing dollars, but of marketing will.
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>We're not wasting bandwidth by obliterating flawed arguments that serve only to discourage people from taking constructive action. The only action to be taken is persuasion. No one is required or expected to act out of nobility, because what we seek is in our mutual interest, and that makes perfect sense to me. If you have to ask "Why bother?", why spend so much time telling us why you choose not to bother?
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>Mike