Well now that it ships as a seperate product perhaps MS can get a better feel for how many people are really using it. With it bundled with Visual Studio that would of been nearly impossible. None the less languages will come & go just as they always have.

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>If there is one difference today, it is the brutally frank talk coming from MS and particularly Ken. In another separate thread, somebody said that MS should either promote the hell out of the product or kill it, but in any case, stop pussy footing around. I have been saying this now for 4 years.
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>This fence-riding mentality by MS, hoping that the situation would right itself has IMO, given a bunch of folks false hope. Things like the Steve Ballmer video do one thing, appease the masses, but in the end, they don't really change things.

>Bottom line, when a company tells you they only market a product to the existing customer base and are not interested in new customers for the product, the product is basically dead. IMO, the seeds were laid some 9 years ago when the unified tools strategy was announced in Orlando in 1993. By 1996, the fate was sealed. Who knows what the plans for Fox were in 1995 when 3.0 came out, but I do know this, the reign of Jon Sigler (anybody remember him) did irreversable harm to the product. From that point on, it has been damage control. Whatever the reason, Fox was left in the dust, never to recover, never to be part of the core focus of MS. The core focus is .NET and that is what the field offices are tasked with selling.