That won't happen. NEVER! Ken Levy has been clear on MS position for the marketing for VFP in the last weeks.

Wether the money comes from us or MS the marketing situation won't change for VFP.

So would my suggestion make sense for enough developers?

Then again what's the truth. Is VFP's situation really as bad as some think (like I do) or is it more like what Jim Eddins said in another thread.

Perhaps what Jim said could explain the non-marketing on VFP. What if VFP sales were not that bad and MS does'nt really want that to continue because in long-term it could be bad according to their other marketing efforts.

Two possibilities here.

1) VFP sales are not that good. Then non-marketing will just continue the poor job of non-marketing already started and time will do the rest.

2) VFP sales are not that bad compared to what was expected to happen. If they increase marketing for a tool MS considered was dying (and to their surprise is not for whatever reasons) then the situation could worsen (considering the efforts put on marketing on other tools considered as cash cows).

Perhaps MS misinterpreted the needs of small businesses. Perhaps DBF is not as bad as some say. It's not as sexy as the new stuff but if it can do the job for many businesses and everybody's happy with the proposed solution who does it hurt? Those pushing the new technology at all cost.

They (those early birds) already invested considerable amount of time on studying and developing apps with that new technology. They jump off the old boat early because they want to be on top of the game when they are amongst the first to know all the rules. Nothing new here. Every time a major corporation launch something new there are many that thinks that the situation will be the same as before. That new thing will become "The thing" and nothing else matters. But based on their experiences maybe some will think. Hmmm let's wait and see for a while. The problem here is when too many think it then that could represent a big problem with the corporation trying to push that new cool thing.

So to make it look better than it really is they release horror stories on the things they want to eliminate and they release beautified stories on the things they are pushing. Case studies for example <vbg>

They stop almost entirely (non-marketing) to talk about the old things (even if they're still used by many) and invest enormous sums of money on the new stuff. They want it so bad to succeed. No logical reason here. It's just the way things should work. They release something new and people should use it. It always worked that way. Why should it fail now.


>How about this:
>
>The only problem with MS's handling of VFP (well, the MAJOR one) is poor marketing. Why not just create our own marketing department? How many bucks from how many developers would we need for a really effective quarterly marketing blitz?
>
>>Here's an idea.
>>
>>It could make sense.
>>
>>We all know what's going on. VFP will live as long as the community keeps always upgrading to the new version. But there's a problem with that marketing approach. The problem is that we'll probably lose some members from one version to the other.
>>
>>So we all know what's going to happen but we don't know when.
>>
>>But there will probably remain a group - The size of the group will need to be determined then - that could be considered hardcore dedicated VFP developers.
>>
>>This group be considered as the client. MS considered as the consultant. So we divide the total cost of developing new version for VFP by the number of developers in that group. And then we all pay our share and we keep using a product that becomes ours. Ours is a big word because we's still have to respect MS contract clauses. But that is just a detail <vbg>