And we should not forget how we stumbled into being foxpro developers and users. It's not [as if] our parents reared us to be VFP users. It happened by accident. I remember my first encounter with xBase! Aaaaaah! doze were da daze!

There are two sides to this Data/Fox team merger coin. One could almost imagine marketing gurus at MS thinking: "The desktop is dying, PC's will be relegated to internet appliances." We've been through the centralized data and processing era, I hope we are not being lead back.

Nobody should be denied the prospect of learning and using VFP to develop fancy downtown solutions! Sure, VFP has a learning curve. And sure, [some of] our client base [still] has funky taste in their mouth from all those mid-90's consultants billing VFP grid solutions as if they were Quicken copyrights:-). Our community is doing a better job. VFP is a REALLY BIG tool box that can solve most problems (all by itself) while other products [may] need to form alliances to solve.

MS needs to assure (THEY GOT THE MONEY!) that more prospective developers, college CS departments and others are aware of what we know: VFP is the best "complete solution" tool box in the world. I'll do all I can to get the prospects through those peices of the learning curve I am competent with. We need to grow the community, therefore: VFP should be marketed [vigorously]outside the community.

RANT OFF!


>>So let's get back to VFP. Do you really think that there's something good on marketing it only to its community?
>
>Well, it's not bad. It'd be useless to avoid doing any marketing at all. So, that's a minimum. However, I would say that in general, a company usually markets of product of its own across its entire line of products. Otherwise, it's extremely difficult to attract new customers.