Joe,

I don't use ProMatrix for development but everything I have heard about it makes me think that you and the others involved with its development have taken enormous pride and effort in your construction of a development tool. I'd say the same for VFE, VMP (which happens to be my personal framework tool of choice) and all the other frameworks offered. I chose VMP, not becuase it was intrinsically better or worse than the others but rather that it presented the development process to me in a fashion that was most adaptable to my style. I'm sure that each framework would fundamentally allow me to reach my development objectives and goals so asserting that I like 'X' framework should never be taken as a swipe at all the others.

I was one of the early adopters of TRO (Tom Rettig's Office) and your historical observations are indeed correct. DBCX was an attempt by the community to adopt a universal standard that all framework vendors would code to. SDT uses it as well to this day. What absolutely astounds me is the level of collegiality, friendship and mutual respect all of the various developers generally have for each other. It speaks well for the community that we all are willing to work together as we do.

Running a company (and keeping it profitable! <g>) requires a set of skills far different than those required to analize, design, code, test, deliver and support clients. Sometimes folks forget that just because they are great at one set of skills that this means that they will be good at all others. This isn't always the case and to be able to make the transition from client product developer to developer product developer seems to me to requre even more skill. I applaud all the vendors of the various frameworks. Sure, they take different approaches but the end result is always the same, a more efficient method of providing for the needs of our clients, whether as a 1099 or as a W-2.

I would like to take a moment and thank you, the Feltmans, Doug Hennig, Drew and all the other framework developers for all of your hard work and your willingness to put up with some of us cranky developers as you each strive to create your best. Best wishes to all of you.

ANd, most of all, Tom Rettig for blazing the trail.

>Cecil,
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>I want to apologize to you and to any others who may have been offended by Max Goebel's inference that FoxPro user group members are mostly hobbyists. We know that's not the case for most FoxPro user groups -- particularly, those on the West Coast.
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>Max was drawing on his experiences with the user groups in our area. Unfortunately, the few user groups that remain in our area are not as vibrant and active as those with which you are familiar.
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>However, we have not focused our marketing efforts on demoing ProMatrix at user groups because we have found it more cost effective for us to use print media (particularly, early on) and the Internet. The vast majority of the market for FoxPro frameworks does not belong to user groups, and that's where we've placed our emphasis.
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>In the case of California in particular, in the early days the user groups there were dominated by Fox Express (i.e., 1993 - 1998+, or so). I suspect that VFE is still a major player there. Consequently, it didn't seem to make sense to direct significant marketing resources to an area that was so tightly dominated. Visual Maxframe and other frameworks have apparently done a good job of penetrating the West Coast market, and that's great for them. Perhaps, that's even more reason for us to aim our marketing efforts elsewhere.
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>We have not had an intentional strategy of separating ourselves from the "FoxPro Community". We have been a steady advertiser on the Universal Thread for several years to (among other things)keep our name in front of UT users. I think only Mere Mortals has advertised on the UT as steadily as we.
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>The FoxPro Community is a big place and it's worldwide. We have gone after the part of the community that is not served by user groups and that does not typically participate in online FoxPro communities. There are a lot of those people out there -- more than most people realize.
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>We have tried to develop products that appeal to that other part of the FoxPro Community -- products like the ProMatrix Multilingual Toolkit, which is needed by our International users. (As Max pointed out, about 50% of our users are International.) We have developed VPM Standard with a price of $99 to reach the part of the market that cannot afford the more expensive frameworks. We've done pretty well with this strategy.
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>Before the Internet became the dominate medium for community communications, we participated actively along with everyone else via CompuServe. Then, in 1976 or so, the CompuServe community broke apart and software vendors developed their own Internet-based tools for supporting users. That's when the ProMatrix Newsgroups were created.
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>We now have fourteen different newsgroup differentiated by topic. Twelve of the fourteen are freely open to anyone who wants to use them. You can reach them via a Web browser or a newsgroup reader. You have visited them and have had an opportunity to see how active they are. Perhaps, the ProMatrix Newsgroups have given FoxPro users the impression that we want to separate ourselves, but that is not the case at all. It would be impossible at this point for us to give up our newsgroups, but we would welcome participation by non-ProMatrix users.
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>About one year ago, we created a free demo version of VPME that allows VFP developers to try VPME. {You can download it from the ProMatrix Web.) I mention the demo because it is apparent from some of the messages on this thread that there is a great deal of misinformation about how ProMatrix works. I encourage those of you who aren't sure what ProMatrix is all about to download the VPM Enterprise demo and see for yourselves. If you don't want to take the time to download the demo, you can download the documentation for all our products to learn exactly how they work. There's even a Demo Newsgroup where you can ask questions about the demo as you work with it.
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>Best,
>
>Joe Lawson
>ProMatrix Corporation