Rick,

Assuming that a more widely distributable "public beta" is the subject of your comments...

1) Why do people writing here assume any (significant) additional cost to MS for widening a PUBLIC beta availability when:
a) it could be available by download only;
b) it could, by arrangement with MS, be done from some 'volunteer' site (someone proposed that UT might be convinced, for instance);
c) there is NO bug reporting, thus no added personnel costs, for PUBLIC betas in the first place????

The widespread availability of a public beta would be a first for FP/VFP and so could be newsworthy. I could even see some people from the community taking it upon themselves to write to publications to "inform" them or to reinforce opinion, pointing them to some MS web page that announces the widened beta.

We keep making escape hatches for MS. Ken's initial response on the issue seemed to focus on PIRACY/illegality where the proposal was to accomplish a public beta with the sanction of MS (under the auspices of MS, but not necessarily using any of their valuable resources).


>I'd doubt this was Ken's decision alone (if his at all!), and I also don't believe the added cost would necessarily be offset by the any increased sales due to media exposure for a public beta.
>
>Rick
>
>>I'm with you 100% on #3! While I can understand Ken's reasons for not doing so, I think the potential advantages outweigh the disadvantages by far.
>>
>>Tracy
>>
>>>So,
>>>
>>>1. By making the Beta public by giving it away to all DevCon attendees, you aren't making it generally available. I guess my question would be, why not? Many other MS products have had publically available betas. They have either had a time out, or with VFP, you could not distribute runtimes with the 8.0 beta. Also, this ties with issue 2.
>>>
>>>2. Just because a Beta is made public/released/given to the 1000 attendees of a conference, doesn't put them all in the beta program. So, you still have a manageable size of beta sites that actually can report beta issues, however this is done. Although, I would assume that people that are 'official' beta testers saw something on a forum that was reported by a non beta tester, but a beta 'getter' (devcon attendee).
>>>
>>>3. Look at the tremendous number of .Net stuff that came out before the release. You even had books written based on Beta 2 of it. If VFP had a public beta, and it is as good as we have been lead to believe (feature wise, not stability wise, VFP betas are generally pretty stable) then it would only increase the coverage, articles, press and marketing that VFP 8.0 woud recieve. Heck, you could get several press releases out with a public beta.
>>>
>>>4. Don't MSDN subscribers get beta versions that were released to anyone outside of the beta sites?
>>>
>>>Anyway, just my thouhts comments and questions on the subject. I can't wait to see the beta!
>>>
>>>BOb