Very amusing, indeed!

>Mike;
>
>Perhaps we could convince Larry Ellison to pay for the advertising and marketing for Visual FoxPro? :)
>
>Here is a funny story about Oracle and Larry Ellison – funny to me!
>
>I was working for a company and Oracle was our customer. I was the one and only Visual FoxPro programmer and we sold a third party shipping application, which you could customize. Some work had to be done to meet the needs of Oracle’s shipping department. I arrived at the Redwood Shores Location – Building 8, during the Spring of 1998.
>
>When I arrived at Oracle I was escorted upstairs to a programmers office. The programmer asked if other programmers could join us and see what I was going to do. I had the needs analysis in front of me signed off by Oracle and our company. I figured about one hour programming for what had to be done.
>
>As I began to bring up Visual FoxPro, the room filled with over a dozen people. Everyone was trying to see the monitor I was using and what I was doing. After a few minutes of writing code one programmer stated loudly, “It’s a 4 GL”! After I finished writing the required code and tested my work one of the programmers said, “I would have coded it differently”! I stated, “If I come back here tomorrow I might use a different approach but this works fine”!
>
>
>The programmers told me, “Larry Ellison will not allow us to use any Microsoft Tools! We cannot buy Visual FoxPro or Visual Basic”! I left and everyone was happy. That evening I called a friend of mine and told him about my day at Oracle and the comment about Microsoft Tools. My friend said, “I guess they do not know there is a huge project involving Visual FoxPro going on in building 5”! I laughed my head off – the usual story of a large corporation. The left hand has no concept of what the right hand is doing!
>
>Tom
>
>
>
>>Tom,
>>
>>I agree. It would be an admirable, but pathetically doomed cause to independently market VFP while Microsoft deliberately undercuts those efforts.
>>
>>Mike
>>
>>>Gerald;
>>>
>>>I think that Microsoft should market its own product. It elects not to so there is a message for some of us. If we pay for the marketing (a few million dollars to start will do for a few seconds of television airtime) there is no guarantee that Microsoft will be there to support the product for any period of time. Microsoft could make a business decision today that states:, “Visual FoxPro is no more as of today”!
>>>
>>>Tom
>>>
>>>>Why???
>>>>
>>>>The real problem with the current state of VFP was the lack of marketing outside the VFP developper community. Do you really think that the open source will be the solution for this problem?
>>>>
>>>>If the developper base continue to shrink like a plum under the sun, the fox will soon be an endangered specie. Why dont you offer something to help expand the VFP developper community?
>>>>
>>>>Based on the fact that MS will not market VFP outside the current VFP customer base, a counter offensive from us can be to do the marketing for MS.
>>>>
>>>>I dont know, if every developper put 100$ in a basket, may be we can buy some air time during the next Superbowl?
>>>>
>>>>We can take the word from JVP and go to .NET.
>>>>.OR. We can continue with VFP and cross our arms until the fox fall belly up.
>>>>.OR. We can try to expand the fox developer base to keep our favorite dev tool alive.
>>>>
>>>>Its up to us...
>>>>
>>>>But, open source is not an option IMO ...
>>>>
>>>>>MS should Open Source VFP. They already have SQL Sever, MSDE, Access, ect... They don't need VFP anymore. I doubt it's a drop in the revenue bucket. VFP just doesn't fit that well, hence it dropped out of VS. It's proper place is by it self, where it is now, but out from under the constraints of MS's agenda.
>>>>>Don't get me wrong I think MS has done a great job with VFP, but I think for it to really move forward and to put to bed once and for all the fate of FoxPro, Open Source is the answer.