I want you to know I read your post 10x.....

Monopolies are not per se illegal. Abuse of monopoly power is. As far as dev tools are concerned, has MS abused it's power? As far as dev tools are concerned, does MS have monopoly power? I don't think the answer is a slam dunk yes. You CAN use dbase2000. Within MS, you have a choice between VFP, VB, .NET, etc. VFP IS being supported and updated. Granted, they don't promote VFP, but do they? Is it MS's job to make sure there is a viable market for VFP? To make sure there is a viable market for you to obtain work in your chosen tool???? I think the answer is no.

Here is an analogy. In 1992, I leased a Camry station wagon. Loved the car. In that year, my dad died and my wife's uncle died. We had to go to VA to clear up my wife's uncle's affairs. To make a long story short, on the way to VA, we were in a car accident, my, the wife and our 1.5 year old son. Loved the car. It was magnficent in its ride and in the accident. By 1995, Toyota decided it did not want to build station wagons anymore. Did I have standing to sue? No. In fact, I had alternatives; volvo, mercedes, etc... As a software developer, you have alternatives. Whether you want to avail yourself of those alternatives, that is another issue...

I am not saying you cannot make the argument, but there are some theshold issues you will need to deal with. First off, is MS a monopoly power in the developer tools area? If it is, does it abuse its monopoly power? If so, how (if at all), does VFP play a role in that abuse, assuming the abuse exists??

Convince me....

>Hi John,
>
>Microsoft has already been a part of an anti-trust suit. I'm not sure if that has all been settled, and exactly what remedies the court has imposed. I think Microsoft is a monopoly.
>
>It seems to me that the company should be split to bring back free and fair compitetion between products. It seems unfair that microsoft could handicap one product so that it could extract a greater profit from another product at the consumer expense. The consumer should be able to make the choice about what products it wants base on its needs and the overall value of the goods and services. If Microsoft somehow distorted this free market by forceing consumers to choose one particular product to further its monopolistic control of the market at large, then it may be time to talk to our legislators about our concerns.
>
>Also, companies like Sun, IBM, Dbase, etc could bring a anit-trust suit to ensure that consumer have a free choice as to what products it wants, and that there is some reasonable relation between how much a product costs Microsoft to produce relative to how much Microsoft can charge for it. As you know, once a company achieve a monopoly it tend to raise the price of its product because the cunsumer has no other choices. In achieving the monopoly, a company may use predatory pricing to eliminate compitition by giving its product away or pricing its product below what it cost to produce, but once the company has eliminated the competition, it will extort a high price for the goods or services. I hate to see Microsoft lose interest in VB and VFP, because it wants to own the new OS called the internet. I also hate to see the consumer asked to pay so high a price for this new OS. Usually the consumer is asked not only to buy the new operating system, but the cunsumer must usually buy a
>new computer to handle it. We had better batten down the hatches, because we are in for some mighty rough seas as Microsoft morphs its OS Windows to .Net in a never ending waves of change. In the end the end user will be hurt because it is the end user who Microsoft will ask to pay the price when everything is said and done.