>It is already seven years from San Diego, can you believe it?
>And it is amazing how much things have changed, San Diego was the biggest FoxPro conference ever, now they are saying the expected attendance will be 500, what a pain, precisely now when VFP is better than ever...

It was good to meet you at San Diego in 1995, when VFP 3.0 was launched. I remember I had to translate the presentations for you. *You* have come a long way! Remember that we saw, not met, Ken Levy with his long hair: "He wrote GenScreenX" was the buzz.

The conferences provide that special thing, face to face, and you and I have become good friends since. Fox programmers have a lot in common besides the language itself. Perhaps it is the fact that a multi faceted language attracts a certain type of person. With VFP you can create a lot of things, almost by yourself. It appeals to the small independent developer, rather than the corporate developer.

VFP is better than ever, true. I must say that I will stay with it at least until .NET is ready... in 2 to 4 years. But frankly, I think longer. At one point I wrote a rather good system with Wang Basic2C, a very rudimentary language. That convinced me that knowing your tool well is better than having the latest one, and that is what I plan to continue doing with VFP.

I know you are going to the Florida DevCon. Please tell me about it.

About amnesty, I don't agree (sorry). MS should not place the license price too high, but it should insist on it. As programmers we wouldn't like anything else.

Regards to Maria.

Handshakes :) (in case you have been following these threads).

Alex


>Anyway, I'll be there and we are completing the bucks for Maria too. I guess we'll see you in some other time.
>
>Thinking on ways for "helping" M$ sell more VFP boxes, I pushed in my company to include a full version of VFP with each license of the new version of our product. I guess, my reasoning was sound -better support on site than using my command window replacement-, and it was approved, so they will be 150 to 200 more VFP 7 boxes sold in Jan 2003.
>
>But that is not enough.
>Then, I remembered Novell had an "amnesty campaign" for Netware years ago, it was a huge success for them.
>Netware was hugely pirated in South America, so it was "popular"; acknowledging the problem, Novell launched a marketing campaign to "legitimize" copies with real licenses at an very attractive price. They sold a lot, created revenue and customers than are loyal up to date.
>
>Visual FoxPro is one of the most popular languages/databases in the world, people here may believe it or not.
>Pirated copies are all over, from Asia to East Europe to South America: we need to understand, with the economies being so different, USD$300 is very difficult to pay if your monthly salary or income is in the $100-$200 range.
>I'm not condoning piracy, I'm just pointing out were the problem has its roots.
>
>So this is my advice to Ken: launch a six months amnesty campaign for VFP around the world, price it at $99.99 -or so-, in order to participate, people must send to the local M$ office the pirated media and/or manuals.
>To be in tune with the actual marketing mantra, the campaing may explain VFP is the perfect companion to .NET, etc...
>Include in the VFP CD a page with links to all VFP related sites; maybe negotiate with Michael a discounted PUTM for those guys too, you-name-here-more-details, etc
>
>I'm sure this effort will be fruitful and that we will gather a huge crowd that now is totally on the loose, silent and not generating a penny.
>
>What do you think? Comment on this please. If you think the idea has value, we can start a new thread in the Chatter section and on the Wiki.