>>>> I wonder, do you and other MVP's get info that I cannot get in any way?
>>>
>>>Of course.
>>
>>Of course?????
>
>Of course. They have access to additional information that they use to help the rest of the community. Of course, they can use some of that in their own advantage, maybe.
>but if they stop helping the community, they don't keep the MVP the next year.
>
>This is basically what the program is about.
[snip]

This thread has developed quite well. I have a reason to especcially react to your message, because you mention the two aspects that I wanted to be at the core of the thread.

I don't believe that any of us is only doing all this helping just out of altruism.

Sure, some (no, most!) are, in our case, really enthousiastic about VFP, and they feel an irrational urge to share what they discovered with those others who share their enthousiasm for the product. For some of us the enthousiasm started in 1985 or so when they saw Foxbase do what dBase did a hundred times slower (yes, I'm one of them). "Hey man, guess what I discovered last night!!"

But we're professional enough these days to realize that it's not that smart if you're giving away precious 'discoveries' just like that to 'colleagues', when you just spent hours and hours trying to figure out those things. There must be more selfish reasons for 'helping' others also.

Reasons might be esteem, recognition and becoming well-known, and those might give a head start in the economical sense.

Those reasons are fine with me. But.... but what we see here today is that the MVP's get additonal information that others don't get and that this alone gives them a potential head start. That's just not fair competition, IMO!