First, I would say there were at least 30 to 35 VFP MVPs and the MVP Summit at Microsoft last week. Thanks, to a suggestion by Ted Roche, most of us were wearing coordinated VFP t-shirst each day. One of us, however, whose initials are MH, got his t-shirts out of order. < bg > Other than WinXP and .NET, I would say, VFP had a higher profile at the Summit than any other product. We have the coordinated efforts of the VFP MVPs who were there, Ken Levy and the rest of the MS VFP Team to thank for this.

I am very confident in the VFP Team, the direction VFP is going, and its current position in Microsoft's line of developer products, tools and frameworks. We are probably the tightest knit group with respect to the positive relationship between the VFP Developers and the MS VFP Development team. There is no better working relationship than what we have with the VFP Team. VFP is definitely not the bastard step-child of MS that many would have had us believe.

At the Summit, I did have an off-line discussion with one of the VFP team members on bug disclosure. Based on this conversation and drawing some conclusions of my own, the following are my thoughts on this subject.

They [MS in general, VFP Team specifically] absolutely do understand the issue, but they are in a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't position. Currently, the general philosophy is not to disclose all bugs to everyone. By my own deductions, one problem is they have been burned by info on the total number of bugs for various products getting out and winding up as flaming articles in various technical venues. Now, if I had provided someone with information that would be very helpful to someone, but potentially harmful to me if the info was passed on, only to then see that information used against me publicly, I would be leery of going down this same road again.

They do understand the reasons are valid on both sides of the issue, they have just not come up with a mutually acceptible solution that will address the needs of Developers and Microsoft's issues.