John,

>>>The people MSFT is interested in selling VFP 8 to already use VFP.
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>>What do you base this assertion on, or is it gratuitous? <g>
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>My garbled word order aside, I base it on induction; taking specific situations and inferring a general premise to form a rule. The specific actions I see reasonably lead me to the conclusions I have made. Given the nature of things, you can easily disagree and come to a different conclusion that is different than mine.

That's fair enough. Other than your use of the word "reasonably", which is certainly open for dispute (you're cleverly loading your arguments here JVP but I consider that good lawyer practice. <g>) I have no trouble that you reach the conclusions you have - other than at times you seem to be asserting your conclusions far too early. This causes me to wonder if you're more focused upon your debating style than the debate/discussion itself. <s> I'd hate to think you were focusing on your 'sword' rather than just using it, again, if you catch my drift.

I think others are picking up on your use of words like the one I mention above and perhaps taking umgrage at them, themselves presuming something you do not intend to convey. Perhaps you should revisit your use of the language as opposed to the actual content you're trying to convey. Typically I've never had any problems whatsoever with your general assertions - rather I've sometimes been put off by the abruptness of your language. I've often teased and cajoled you regarding this in the hope you'll come to understand the differences between the messenger and the message, so to speak.

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>Well, perhaps MSDN is a better medium of delivering VFP but the problem I see there is that when you do this you also distribute VB, MASM and so forth so your numbers can get skewed quite quickly. What direction they get skewed, if they do, is I suppose in the eye of the beholder. IOW, maybe all those MSDN subscriptions are VFP folks as opposed to VB folks and then we could say that VFP is outselling VB, if you catch my drift.
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>I think you have to distinguish between the ends and the means. The specific tools and products in MSDN are the means, subscribing to MSDN is the end. I would bet that you would sell more MSDN by pitching the fact that products like VS .NET, the .NET platform, Office, etc are contained in MSDN as opposed to VFP. The only people the latter would have an effect on are VFP developers.

Perhaps, and I suppose it would provide a corrolary point of reference for more accurately determining what is actually being used.

From my pov I suppose I don't really care much either way - for reasons I've posted before. Things like the latency time such changes take place in and the natural abilities of most good programmers and the momentum of current VFP-based projects and the indifference of some decision makers with respect to the specific tool being used and the continued development of the product by MSFT.

For goodness sakes, you'd think that in ten years of Microsoft ownership they would have had ample time and reason to kill the product had they actually been only interested in gutting it (like many said they would 1992) for the technologies like Rushmore. Microsoft's a lot smarter than that IMO. They saw a good deal when they got the developers as well as the product.


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>I'd be surprised if there weren't other indicators that MSFT is using to guage the useage level of VFP, VB and the rest.
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>Surveys...

Sure.. And closely guarded business information I'd be willing to bet. All you and I are doing is speculating and apart from an opportunity for socialization, enhancing one's communication skilland and gaining/maintaining professional contacts and friendships I dare say we're just plain guessing. <g>