Jim;

I think companies should protect patents, trademarks, logos, etc. Art work created for a product should be accepted and owned by the Microsoft in this case. What one person or group feels is appropriate may not be in the eyes of the owner. The concept presented seems innocent and presents a message of pride by the Visual FoxPro Development Community. I am glad that Microsoft has taken up this issue and will present its own authorized version of VFP art work. Most corporations would prefer to sue than take the action Microsoft has chosen.

Remember how Ashton Tate treated the development community and other organizations? Just the mention of the word dBase was cause for a lawsuit. There were many lawsuits filed by Ashton Tate. When they sued FoxPro their posture and corporation was destroyed. They thought they were gods and were nothing more than a part of the “public domain”!

All third party products for dBase had to be licensed (third parties had to pay Ashton Tate an annual licensing fee). If Ashton Tate liked what you were selling it would be included for free in the next maintenance release. I remember getting maintenance releases about every 6-8 weeks from the initial release of dBase II. This put many third party providers out of business.

We are not attorneys and I believe Michel has taken the best course of action. At the same time I see the original suggestion as a great marketing tool. Just think of the potential marketing effort developers can create and with the help of Ken Levy and Microsoft we might just get some of our concepts placed into reality!

Tom



>I understand that Ken Levy is going to get us an "official" rendition of the UT-evolved graphic/item. That's a very good thing.
>
>But something doesn't feel right about the MS legal folk pressing (or causing the pressing of) UT management to remove the original on the basis of "re-branding".
>Since I can't find a definition of "re-brand" in my dictionary I can't offer anything tangible as an argument.
>But I can say that my view of this is much along the lines of 'with friends like this, who needs enemies?'. Those legal folks ought to look long and hard at designating position titles as "Evangelist", because that has far more potential to hurt MS than does a graphic of a sweet fox head and the words 'powered by Microsoft Visual FoxPro'.
>
>Can't recollect too many companies complaining when their full product name, including company name, was threatened to be included within other products. Most pay to make this happen! Even in questionable spots.
>Gotta wnder.
>
>JimN
>
>PS I wonder if Plinio will get a cut if (when) something similar becomes a standard inclusion in most developer products?