>Now, now, Nancy, temper, temper.
>
>I did not make myself clear, so I will try again.
>
>1. The appointment of Ken Levy as product manager primarily responsible for sales and marketing is a GOOD THING.
>
>2. It would be a BETTER THING if MS appointed Ken OVERALL VFP MANAGER or product manager primarily responsible for PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT. Ken is a wizard developer who knows what this product needs from a developer's point of view and would certainly push the developer agenda rather than the MS agenda.

Obviously you've never met Ricardo. Ken could not do a better job.

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>3. It may be that MS has had a genuine change in diretion and now intends to more fully promote VFP to the general market as the incredibly powerful database development tool that it is, so more companies will want applications written in VFP and we will all get more work. On the other hand...

It will never get the attention nor advertising that VB gets.

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>4. This is MicroSoft, so one may reasonably entertain the notion that there may be some other, less visible, corporate motive, including the possibility of "appearing" to have a genuine change in direction, while playing the same old game.

See... this is EXACTLY what I've been talking about. It doesn't matter what MS does, there are people that will NOT be statisfied. For a several years, Robert has been involved with the market of several tools, which has split his time and attention. Now they augment that with someone full time, doing nothing but marketing VFP and you still complain.

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>5. I don't think there is the slightest possibility that Ken would knowingly cooperate in any such ruse, and I am certain he has received suitable assurances and guarantees that he will have the authority to market VFP in a way he finds reasonable.

Within the budget given him.

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>6. However, it is not wholly unreasonable to suspect that MS might break a lot of those promises as it has done many, many times before.
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>THEREFORE,
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>While I fully intend to give this new arrangement the benefit of the doubt, I do not expect much. Not because Ken is not very capable, but because I don't think MS will actually let him do very much.

You're going to be very surprised.

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>I am willing to be wrong, but I don't expect to be.
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>Regards,