Tom,

There are a couple of inaccuracies in your post that should be corrected.

First, Bill Gates and Paul Allen did not found the company in New Mexico. The company, MITS (as I recall it stood for Micro Intrumentation Telemetry Systems) was already in existence. It was founded by a fellow named Ed Roberts, who now lives in Georgia. The company initially produced radio controllers for flying model airplanes. They invented the Altair.

One of the reasons that I'm familiar with the story is that a friend of mine from Chicago, Mark Chamberlin, was at MITS, when Gates and Allen were hired to write a BASIC interpreter for the Altair.

Second, the reasons for the popularity of BASIC has nothing to do with the above. At the time, the various flavors of BASIC were probably the most universal language available on a PC. I recall reading an article in the late 1980s where Bill Gates talked about his strategy for the macro language for the various Microsoft products. He said that because BASIC was commonly understood, that it would be the foundation for these languages.

Is Microsoft "protective" of its version of BASIC? Perhaps, but only in the context of its market share. IOW, if it ain't profitable, then they don't bother. We've seen this a number of times with the company's stance towards various products.

There's a story (whether or not true, I don't know) that Microsoft in the late 1980s was concerned about Borland and its TurboBASIC, taking over the market for the compiled BASIC programming environment. Microsoft, as the story goes, put two teams in charge of the next release of its BASIC compiler. The one that finished first, would be QuickBASIC 3.0.

As I said, I don't know if the story is true or not, but six months after the release of QB 3.0, came QB 4.0. In and of itself, that short a time frame between the release of major versions, adds credence to the truth of the story. A question, however, remains: Was this done because it was BASIC, or was it done because of market share?

I don't know and don't pretend to know. Given its history, however, I would assume it to be market share. The one thing, however, that annoys me greatly about the Fox community, is its "pity pot" mentality. Microsoft (Bill Gates) loves BASIC and won't give us...(fill in the blanks). This is pure tripe, and deserves to be treated as such.

I've said this before, and I don't mind saying it again, the future of VFP is in our hands. As long as we continue to use the product to produce the results that our customers are looking for, it will survive, because it will be profitable for Microsoft to continue to invest time and resources to improve it. Sitting on the "pit pot" and moaning about how much we're "unloved" won't.

The future of VFP doesn't depend on whether or not it partipates in the CLR. From my POV, it would be a gross mistake to make VFP a CLR compliant language. The mindset of some people is that "everyting belongs on the Internet/Intranet". In truth this sort of thinking returns us to the days of "Big Iron". The fundamental reason that PCs rose to such popularity is the fact that they put power into the hands of the users. Every application does not necessarily belong on the corportate Internet/Intranet. The sad thing is that most people (fron my perspective) don't realize this and will fail to take advantage of it.

Sorry for the rant.

You friend,