>>The message to upper management I was talking about is a help to the dedicated VFP development team within Microsoft. They now hace a separate product (from .Net) and a separate budget. Individual sales are now more measurable. What do you think management will say about budgeting for new versions if only a few people upgraded? Ricardo, Ken and company can only do so much. We, the community, have to stand behind them and show that we like the product and buy it. Unfortunaltely that is not what happenned with the certification exams. After years of complaining we didn't have them, they came about and not enough people went for them. Let's not repeat that mistake.
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>Because you believe (rightly or wrongly) you have "inside information" on how MS develops and markets VFP you have fallen into the trap of making MS's problems your problems.

Actually, one does not need an MBA (or MSFT inside info) to figure this out. If customers don't buy it, the company will stop making it. I used to get a similar question a lot when I worked in VFP tech support: "why did they quit making VFP for Mac?"

"Umm, because not enough people bought it to make it worthwhile to continue development?"

Now, that's just my guess, as I didn't work for Microsoft when that decision was made. But, again, it seems to be common sense to me.

>I'm a bit concerned that MS is adding features to VFP that few other than gurus can understand or use.

So you say today. Only gurus knew the implications of creating COM servers when 6.0 came out (or was it 5.0? Garrett and I argued about this just tonight). And yet, how many VFP devs today take VFP COM servers for granted now? Often times, we may look to add features that may look esoteric today, but you'll expect to be in any product tomorrow. Take Web Services, for example. Oh, sure, it's no big deal now. What would the hew and cry be if we were to take that feature set out of VFP.Next + 2, after everyone has adopted Web Services and rolled the.m into their apps?

>My main point is that it's been a long time since we saw a breakthrough improvement in the Fox.

I would disagree. Okay, 6.0 was kind of ho-hum as an upgrade, breakthrough-wise. But 7.0? C'mon, Web Services integration, which no other shipping Microsoft product has, isn't enough? Oh, Delphi does WS? Umm, I've seen their implementation, and it's still not as cool as ours. Way too much code to write, given that I can add a WS to IntelliSense.

Data-driven IntelliSense? The Cobb Editor Extensions were cool, and I used them a lot. Cobb pulled off a good one with that. Other MSFT langs have similar functionality, too. But scripting? Umm, no. I'll gather my various scripts and make them suitable for public consumption, and you tell me if that isn't reason to upgrade or not.

And then there's the IMPLEMENTS clause. Yeesh, are you aware of how much you can do with this? Though I'll agree this probably falls into your "guru" category, it won't for long once folks find out what they can do with it.

>- VFP7 (which I don't own yet) - Intellisense looks "cool" but it isn't a language enhancement. That and improved Web support can't really be considered breakthroughs if they are already present in other products and we're just playing catch-up.

We're not playing "catch up"! Name me one shipping product that has the Web Services support that VFP has, Microsoft or not. Well, okay, there's that XML thing. Oh, wait, I guess we do that, too. What is VFP missing again?

But there's the dichotomy. Do you want features that avoid VFP playing "catch up", or do you want features that non-gurus can use straight away? Because the features that avoid the "catch up" game aren't features that Joe NonGuru can use tomorrow.

>Another good way to get people to upgrade is to discontinue support on earlier products e.g. VFP5. Cold-blooded, perhaps, but a business decision and certainly valid for a number of reasons.

Assuming that the average VFP dev is a consultant, how long would you expect them to support clients on old versions before the consultant says, "upgrade, already! I can't afford to hire 'old pharts' that know a version that's five years old, just to support those that refuse to upgrade!" The decision is not only valid on a number of fronts (least of which being to force upgrades), but it is also done at other software companies in a much more aggressive manner than I have seen Microsft do.

BTW, and Garrett back me up here, VFP5 is still supported.

>Finally, if MS is serious about expanding the VFP user base, they need to support college courses to "indoctrinate" developers while their minds are impressionable. It can be argued that the continued existence of Apple Computer is thanks to their far-sighted outreach program into the educational community. If I were MS I'd be concerned about the (perceived) increasing average age of VFP developers.

As I understand statements that have been publicly made by Ken Levy, this is being worked upon.