>We have the same and more problems of this type where I work. We have contracts with Microsoft for technical assistance, and use Visual Studio 6.0. I am not allowed to use Visual FoxPro at my place of employment even though I was hired for my background with VFP. We have something like 50 servers and 80 developers. With VFP “Out of the box”, I see less chance than ever before to be allowed to use it as a development tool. I am fighting city hall and paying the price for it – I will not win. Microsoft has told the company the same things about VFP – and it is not used.

The strategy should be to be to upgrade to MSDN Subscriptions, like MSDN Pro which contains VFP7, VS6, and VS .NET. Developers should become MSDN developers (not tied to any one tool), and then VFP can be used by the developer where it needs to be. People who have employers or clients who think like this need to be told you are an MSDN developer, and that VFP is one of a set of tools you use to build applications.