John,

SNIP
>To all three of these, unless the person in the outside world uses the product or is actively considering the product, does it matter. In other words, just because there is activity, does that mean it will be acted upon. I get the sense that if people believe VFP is mentioned in all of these places, somehow, VFP will take hold and the market will grow. To this conclusion, I label it as invalid because:
>
>1. It is counter to MS goal of getting companies into .NET
>2. It would make for an automatic reversal of a 5+ year trend when there is no
> evidence to support such a reversal exists.

People (well, at least me) do believe that mention in MS publications does show that the product is active and alive. Compare this to the 5+ years of no mention virtually anywhere in a MS rag. Insiders (at MS) and outsiders (bolstered by our friends at gartner) all thought that VFP was no longer or that it was on death row. Decision makers were saying no way, not in my shop.
Now there is at least a chance that the decision makers will consider the product AND an even better chance that, should they ask a MS rep about it they will get a knowledgeable response rather than the 'huh, do we still sell that' or 'we don't sell that any more'.

>
>>
>Whether these announcements influence these managers in their decisionmaking is unknown, but they can't say that Microsoft is ignoring the product if they see it mentioned regularly.
><
>
>So at best, it is a moral victory of sorts. Remember, if there was a commitment to grow the market, there would be feature ads in all the trade rags.
>
This is where I fear the push on .NET will get in Ken's way. Feature ads could be off the table for anything but .NET for all we know. Marketers are known to be a paranoid bunch, and if the .NET marketers can convince the powers that matter that ONLY .NET-family development tools may be promoted through feature ads, well....
It is only a "moral victory" if things end where they are now. I'm betting they won't.

While I'm at it... I know there are a thousand reasons why this sounds like a wet dream, but I'm still of the mind that VFP and VB will "merge" one day.

Cheers

By the way, your way of quoting really makes it hard to tell for sure who said what.


>You know what they say about moral victories????
>
>There are no moral victories...
>
>Thanks for confirming things for me. I have long suspected as much...
>
>Regards,