SNIP
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>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!

Again, I didn't interpret that as the issue here. We all agree that any company will emphasize its strategic initiatives.
But I read that there appears to be calculated diminishment AND (unwarranted and unwelcomed) COMPETITION being deliberately created between .NET and ANY other non-.NET MS product - not just VFP.

And I do think that this (possibly) represents a new branch of business/marketing not previously seen from Microsoft - FULL INTEGRATION of "community" into the MARKETING of a product... .NET. And I don't think that this is how businesses, and especially Microsoft, operates (I should say 'operated' in the past).
The worry/complaint, as I read it, is that this is underway without notification AND is significantly IMPACTING long-established communties and user groups. It's like Microsoft has taken over "community" and is molding it as it desires without even participation of long established (and heretofore most beneficial to Microsoft) user groups and communities. Worse still, many community members willingly helped Microsoft in its building efforts for a .NET community and the reward is betrayal and unwitting participation in a business process.


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>Mike