>When VFP is mentioned in places where Microsoft makes general announcements (MSDN Flash, Microsoft website front page, latest additions on MSDN Downloads page) then non-VFPers, including management types, see that there is VFP "activity" such as new
>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.

Many times managers want to drop VFP from use in their companies because "nobody uses it anymore," "Microsoft no longer supports it," or similar. If the goal is to prevent perfectly good and functional applications from being dropped due to misinformation like this then "activity" such as announcements will help the developers who support these applications from losing jobs or contracts.

Maybe some believe/hope the VFP market will grow "substantially" because of Ken's efforts. I don't, and I don't think that is Ken's goal. I do believe that Ken's efforts will help those developers who have good ideas and working code from being squashed by uninformed managers, and I think that's Ken's goal.

One more thing - here in a conservative environment (NT4 and Office97) I think .NET will be slow to catch on because of the percieved security issues and other unknowns. That makes the choices for new development either VFP or VB6. Since VB6 is not forward-compatible in the way VFP7 is, VFP has a distinct advantage.