Hi, Will.

I'm sorry, but I disagree with most of your reasoning.

[snip]
>There is no licensing fee attached to the runtimes and there is no need to buy SQL Server (licensing fees) for many applications. MS does not want to empower developers with a tool capable of producing an unlimited number of applications for an unlimited number of users for one lower price. [snip]

You can say exactly the same about all the dev tools (MS or not). If you purchase VB6, it comes with MSDE or the Jet engine. True, both have its limitations, but the VFP engine also have some.

The reason they market development tools (and the main one behind .NET) is that this way they ensure plenty of software for their platform (Windows) and usinf their infrastructure (Windows Server, SQL Server, Exchange, etc).

>MS has been spreading the death of VFP rumors for years to instill fear, uncertainty and doubt about VFP. MS doesn't want to be the one to directly pull the plug. They want us, the developers, the community to kill VFP. If they can get enough VFP developers to jump ship it’ll be that much easier for them to justify ending the VFP saga.

I know that VFP is not strategic for MS, and as such, it is a niche product within the company, but as far as I know, the company never spread its death. Granted that MANY people inside MS doesn't knew nothing about VFP, or didn't gave it any importance, but this has changed a bit thank to Ken's internal efforts.

Actually, MS could have killed the product many years ago, but they didn't, and instead they still keep a team working on it. If .NET is their main strategy, of course they'll spend tons more resources and marketing on this.

I see the optimist side of the coin: We have another version coming, and I still can deliver applications much faster than what I can with .NET. Some day this would change, and I wouldn't have any problem to divide my work 50%/50% or finally switch. I'm not religious about VFP.

What I really hope is that the VFP community stick together, maybe becoming the "Data community" or something like this...

But I think this day is still quite far in the future...

Regards,