>> Take Michel's example: Montreal has only a very small MS presence in terms of staff (and square footage, I presume). Whether by accident or by design, that limited staff is now so focused on .NET that it simply doesn't have time to maintain the other practises and procedures that were in place for MS' other product lines. That's the polite version.

Now let's describe a possible version: MS needs to make .NET a huge success, as soon as possible. Accordingly, any product line that is not in the .NET family is to be de-emphasized, receiving only marginal attention, only when absolutely necessary. <<

Of course. What is surprising in any way about that? More to the point, what is wrong with it? This is how businesses operate. They set their priorities and the highest priorities get the most attention. For a marginal customer group -- which, let's face it, we VFP developers are -- to complain that they aren't getting as much attention as the top priority customer group is just plain silly. Microsoft views web services as a key strategy and .NET as their technical implementation of that strategy. OF COURSE they emphasize it!

Mike