>You are talking about very important things. Thank you.
>
>In Russia I have customers, who cannot afford to by a new hardware, so I HAVE to use FPD 2.6a for them with 486 computers.
>
>Some customers has old Pentium computers with W95 and they never hear about Internet (may be in Jokes or by TV :) So, I use for them VFP 6.0.
>
>Some new companies have branches and need to have connections over Internet - I have no choise - VFP 7.0 with Web services.
>
>And now I need new VFP 8.0 features - Date Adapter with XML update functions (I hope easy and cool).
>
>In Russia - money is a very important questions. I was proud, that I have all legal products - FPD 2.6a, VFP 6.0 and VFP 7.0. It was a leagal way to use MS products (that gave reason to my friends lough under me). I have no money for full VFP 8.0 version (I am collecting money for upgrade version till last year). What I have to do? As many programmers in Russia - use a piracy copy?
>
>Why Microsoft push me on that illegal way? Who can help developers in developing countries?
>
>
>>Here's the stupid thing that I did. I upgraded to VFP7 even if I did'nt really needed it. It was my contribution to the community.
>>
>>I upgraded to VFP 7 but I still develop things with VFP6 because apparently I can still do that. At the moment I use VFP7 because of its intellisense but compile in VFP6. So it's the best of both worlds.
>>
>>Now with VFP 8 it's another ball game. Upgrading to VFP8 means that development with lower versions must stop.
>>
>>I bought some cool third party tools that allow me to build nice applications with VFP6. But with VFP7 I have some problems. So for now it's not too bad because I can still use VFP6.
>>
>>So if I have problems with these third party tools with VFP7 I don't see why I would'nt have the same problems with VFP8.
>>
>>But the catch is that I can't upgrade to VFP8 because I don't know if I'll have problems with those tools. And If I upgrade to VFP8 and have problems with those tools I can't go back to VFP6. Sure I could remove VFP8 (or can I from a legal point of view because at that point I upgraded to VFP8) and stay with VFP 7 or 6 or others below. But after losing some dollars doing the VFP8 test.
>>
>>Is it only me or is there something weird with that decision by MS to do that?

I just hope that they will get enough reactions from developers and re-evaluate their position. A guy can dream ;-)