I am in complete agreement with you here. I think John's argument about "who will support the Applications & people expecting support from MS" is specious.

Lets face it - what kind of warranty do you get with ANY Microsoft software? Next to nothing.

In my opinion MS cares not for fair use.

>Any windows application would run under WINE which runs under Linux. WINE (Wine Is Not an Emulator) is actually a rewrite of the operating system calls that all applications running under windows use. The call structure and parameters are open (published by M$) so that developers can write software that is sure to run under windows. The WINE group doesn't have to test all applications, they just have to test all of the OS calls and make sure they work right. WINE is still alpha software but they were responding very well to the folks who were testing VFP under WINE when they ran into problems. We fully expected the WINE group to respond in the near future and were confident that a version of VFP could be run under WINE on Linux would be as bug free as the same version on windows. In addition, any discovered remaining bugs running VFP under WINE would be well known and openly published as WINE problems.
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>As for the customers, I've been screwed by a new M$ OS (win98) making my existing VFP product that had been running great under win95 (VFP 5.0 w/Maxframe 3.0) lock up on SOME desktops. That one cost me the product and an $80,000/year+ job. I'd trust an Open Source group that I can directly effect and keep my eyes on more than M$ at this point.
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>The license is the problem. M$ will not allow any "windows" software to run on any computer that hasn't bought windows. Hell, many times they even make you "upgrade" windows to run their next software "upgrade". They want to own it all -- every desktop, every server, every credit card and wallet.
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>As for your who will support the application? I suspect that it's highly unlikely that someone who's running an application they bought from you or me and are running under WINE on a Linux workstation are going to call M$ for help. Hell, I don't call M$ for help for M$ stuff...I've never gotten a straight or accurate answer from them when I have called M$ "tech support". You will support your application just as you have to when it's running under windows.