>Begging the question, why is it good?

Fair question. Let me suggest two reasons:

First, from a marketing perspective, every positive mention of VFP in a public context is a good thing because it helps to secure VFP's position in the evoked set of "legitimate" developer tools. This particular mention of VFP, coming as it did from an area within Microsoft other than the Fox team itself, is valuable because it helps to further ratify the product. It does so at the most basic level simply by publicly acknowledging once again that VFP is alive and well. In this particular case, it also does so by placing VFP in the same context as the other Microsoft developer tools. Given that perception is reality most of the time, I'm particularly sensitive to the latter ever since VFP was taken out of Visual Studio; although this was the right decision, AFAIC, it was nonetheless one whose marketing and public relations implications concerned me at first.

Second, from a technical perspective, anyone who bothered to at least scan the newsletter is now aware that VFP 7.0 is already up to SP1. Not a big deal, perhaps, but certainly a sign of the continuing vitality of VFP.

> ... Is the mere fact that it was distributed but not necessarily read or noticed by those outside the community good or to be good, does it need to be acted on by those outside of the community.

It's like advertising. Given a particular ad, you can't necessarily determine that any specific person will act by buying the product, but across the entire target population you know that advertising is effective. How many eyeballs see MSDN Flash? I don't know. Of those of did see this one, how many attended to the mention of Visual FoxPro 7.0 SP1? Again, I don't know. But, undoubtedly, VFP got more exposure by being mentioned than if it had not been mentioned. And more importantly, it was mentioned in a positive context in a message whose distribution went beyond the Fox community itself.

Let's take it a step further. When it comes to deciding what tool to use, do decision makers read MSDN Flash? Perhaps some. Maybe not too many. But I'll bet that a lot of those who don't read it listen to those who do read it.

>I don't mean to pick on your post here, ...

No problem

> ...but you express a view point that is puzzling to me. IMO, a message is only good, has value to the extent that it is read.

Who knows how many people actually read it? Again, it's like advertising. How many ads do most of us flip past in the average magazine? Maybe most of them. But of those ads that we that don't really read, do any of their products or services stick in our minds, even if subconsciously? I'd say yes. The effect is the same here - anyone who even browsed the MSDN Flash saw the VFP product name, and if they attended to the message at all then they're also aware that something positive is happening with it. And that's a good thing, IMO.

>So....why is it good? It would help me tremendously to understand the other side here if you could elaborate...

Tried to. Don't know how well I've succeeded. IAC it's an interesting question.