>With that "train of thought" in mind why does Microsoft provide any ODBC drivers or OLE DB providers for free? In this situation I as a developer have purchased a MSDN subscription and need to access VFP data from ASP. I am a little puzzled by this posturing. I know most knowledgeable clients who purchase applications consider data connectivity during the discovery process. Now I must respond to clients that if they want to access VFP data from Excel they have to either have me install a provider, use a legacy ODBC driver or purchase VFP.
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>I’m a little curious what the developer community thinks about this.
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I think "use it as runtime" is the note of importance here. That tells me that I as a developer can distribute it with my applications royalty-free and thus my customer does not need to buy a VFP7 license to use my application. From the client's standpoint it's like an ActiveX control, it's included in the app but they may not use it for other development.

I suppose being a VFP developer gives you an advantage here, if you're not well then you need to buy the package if you want the OLEDB provider. As you mention the ODBC provider is still available for data access.