Hi Al,


>- Some developers, and some end-users who are technically inclined get very nervous if a tool is not going to be supported by its sole-source vendor
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>- Technical advances can leave even a best-practices, state-of-the-art VFP app behind. For example, at this point it looks like even VFP9 will not run "natively" on the next MS OS, "Longhorn".
>Re: Longhorn and VFP Thread #844544 Message #844566
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>So, conceptually, current-generation COM-based VFP apps could end up the way 16-bit FPW apps currently look under OSs like WXP or W2K - dated-looking and with clunky support "under the hood".

Fair point. I was being too subjective from my pov where I develop shrink wrap apps. This would also affect me negatively if my app doesnt work or look properly under "Longhorn".

On the upside however, I had to battle to get many of my users to upgrade from 95 in order to run my VFP7 apps (now all VFP8). Many, many of my end-users (2000+) will be slow upgraders to new windows platforms. Many of these individuals, mom and pop shops, or small business' simply dont see the value for money in upgrading plus the cost of the hardware upgrades required to run these new OS's plus the cost of reinstalling all their apps etc. The upgrade process is a downright irritation. I recently upgraded to a new 3Ghz laptop. It took me a day and half and I "sort of" knew what I was doing :)

A friend of mine upgraded yesterday their W98 installation. Now their CD-Rom doesnt work. Their sound system doesnt work. They need to download who knows how many patches. Pain.

My point is that they can release Longhorn tomorrow and most of my end-users will not upgrade for quite a while, years maybe. I appreciate this is a subjective pov but I cannot imagine that I am the only one with these types of end-users.



>>For a "one-pager" I think its reasonable without getting too involved. It touchs the main bases and clearly highlights several scenarios where SQL/Oracle would be the correct choice as opposed to DBF.
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>I was trying to point out that if a developer was in a "clean-sheet" position and could choose any technology for a new project, it's not a great discussion of VFP's drawbacks, and does practically nothing to discuss alternatives. The link bangs VFP's drum well but an objective evaluator would need other reviews of VFP plus those of other technologies to reach a truly informed opinion.

OK, fair enough.



>If you're on something other than Windows, *n?x support stopped in the DOS days, Mac support ended at VFP3. Incidentally, since VFP has been Win32 only since version 5, MS has had 4 production versions (soon to be 5) to base VFP forms on true Windows forms, support callbacks and in general eliminate the compatibility and interoperability problems we've faced for years. But, they haven't done so.
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>For some in the developing world, the price of a copy of VFP, plus a PC and a copy of Windows to run it on, is a sizeable fraction of a year's pay. This is a real dilemma for companies like MS and a significant force driving the use of open source products.

This argument applys to all MS dev tools too of course. And it will be a huge factor in favour of the open source products.


>And then, very often if you're in the developing world (and often even if you're in the developed world!) the product isn't even in your language! I imagine in your case, it'd be easier to sell to government agencies if the product were localized to Afrikaans.

btw, Government in SA is not primarily Afrikaans anymore. Thats was the old national party of the apartheid days - over 10 years ago :) This is the "New SA" with 9 official langauges!! :) But English is spoken by everyone. And your point is valid and taken.


>Now, MS is trying to tell us they're doing the world a great favour by (very selectively) offering localization kits so volunteers can do their work for them! This is true even for large language markets like Spanish, German, French, Russian, Portuguese! IMO this is skating very close to abuse of the VFP community.

hmmm. A complicated issue. Did MS undertake localization for all markets? If not then they havent broken any undertaking / promises as such. They are making a poor business decision perhaps but this has never stopped them before :)

I think the world is changing fast though. The open source community is becoming very powerful and this combined with a lot of anti-MS feeling will be a force to be reckoned with.