>>> I think you are looking at this wrong. The SDK is FREE, the VS.Net is
>>> 100% NOT free.
>
>Hi Chris:
>
>I never said Visual Studio is free ... nor implied it ... sales to developers doesn't seem to be a big business ... sales to enterprise users is a much bigger revenue stream. I said the .NET framework is free. Big difference.
>
...
>
>Who knows really ... MS is now approaching a mature industry (if my Management 485 hasen't failed me). Licensing is the key to new revenue growth (one key anyway). Do you really think that the developer base is the source of MS revenue like this post implies??? I don't think it is ... but that's just me.
>
>Respectfully,
>
>CTBlankenship

Hi Charles,

Yes I know you never said anything about Visual Studio being free, that was just my poor attempt at providing a comparison between the way VFP is licenced and the way .Net is licenced. My understanding is that you were trying to say that the runtime will be charged for when there is 80% (or whatever amount) penetration of .Net in the market (am I correct?)

Yes I know that developers are not the major source of revenue for Microsoft - Maybe a better way to say what I am trying to say is that I don't think they will ever charge for the .Net Framework Runtime. Yes I agree that at some point they may charge for the SDK side of things, but I believe the runtime will stay free forever just as it has for Visual Basic, Visual C++, Visual FoxPro, Java etc.

But you can guarantee that they will say "Well you can't install .Net 3.5 on Windows 2003, you will have to upgrade to Windows 2005" - and this is where developers become a major source of revenue for Microsoft, when we motivate our customers to upgrade their Microsoft software in order to use our software. Look at VFP 8, it isn't supported for deployment on Windows 95 or NT4 anymore, so how much did Microsoft make when you (and all the other people who use it) switched from VFP 7 to 8 ?

Well I hope I have explained my point a bit better now (if not just ignore everything i have said <g>). Maybe I should Think before I speak <s>.

Chris.