Interesting. I can see both pros and cons:

Pros:

- If VFP can be evaluated at "no risk" it will reach a wider audience

- It might increase VFP sales, especially in areas of the world where the purchase price represents a lot of money. For example, someone could install the trial version, use it for a contract that earns some money, then use some of that money to register it when the trial runs out. I suppose this is another facet of "no risk".

- There are certainly precedents at MS. For example, just yesterday I was surprised to find that MS Exchange Server is available for 120 day free trial - this product is over US$1000 with 5 client access licenses. I can't recall any free MS trials for developer tools, though.

Cons:

- Enforcement. Developers are notorious hackers and great effort will be expended to defeat any trial-period enforcement scheme. Even requiring Internet access and Windows Product Activation-type technology is not foolproof. And given the nature of the VFP "community", the word would get around fast ;-)

- Philosophy. With VFP you can generate .EXEs and distribute its runtime. If you let the trial version create .EXEs, do you make its runtime trial-period-limited as well? Or do you simply not allow the trial version to create .EXEs? - this seems a bit drastic and not suitable for full evaluation/testing.

- Is there a need? Since the current product is not copy-protected, some people will take advantage and simply pirate the full version. Or perhaps a kinder way to put it, they could "borrow" the product for an "evaluation" period.