Hi Whil,

Thank you so much for the books and Whilfest. The books were top-notch, and Whilfest was a great conference, especially for the price. It was great to have an alternative to the high-priced Devcons at resort hotels.

Chris

>Hi folks,
>
>Heard that the sky was falling... I wanted to wait to say anything about this until the publisher of FoxTalk (Pinnacle) got their act together; evidently that's not going to happen, so here's the scoop.
>
>I resigned as editor of FoxTalk last September, but agreed to stay on as editor until they found someone to replace me. On February 2, I received a letter from Pinnacle, stating "Pinnacle has decided to stop publishing FoxTalk. The final issue will be the April 2004 issue."
>
>They're currently sorting out the transition of subscriptions; if you're a subscriber, you'll be notified about what your options are with the April issue.
>
>So I guess that concludes my involvement with new Microsoft Visual FoxPro-related activities.
>
>Did you hear that? *NEW* activities.
>
>I won't be producing any more Fox-related conferences, publishing new books, editing new issues of FoxTalk, or doing new development in VFP. It doesn't make sense to invest in new Fox-related things cuz they won't make money.
>
>I'll continue to market and sell our current lineup of books; we've got one headed to the printer shortly and another one sometime this summer. And I'm still working on deals for translations and reprints as opportunities arise. I've been badgering my printer to buy a short run press; by the end of the summer, if we run out of current stock of a book, we'll be able to print up a new one on demand - and ship within 72 hours of an order. Indeed, I imagine I'll still be selling VFP books in ten years, although probably not a lot of them. *s* And I'll still support the community however else I can - I think I was the first to announce the 2004 line-up of Fox conferences, for example, and have done a fair amount of behind-the-scenes advising on the Southwest Fox conference later this year.
>
>There's been a lot of talk over the last couple of weeks regarding "Why I'm Moving", starting with threads on the various forums around 2/9. I was sort of surprised by all of this, for a couple of reasons.
>
>First, it's not "news", folks. I handed out Linux CDs at GLGDW in 2002. I've been writing about Linux for a year and a half, and made presentations at about 20 user groups and conferences in 2003. The work Paul McNett and I did even hit the international media once or twice. (Slow news days, I guess.) I have had a Linux machine on my desk as my primary workstation since late 2002. The "Why I'm Moving" piece was posted on my website in late January. I'm not sure what more I could have done to tell people.
>
>Initially, I was sort of surprised by the vile invective unleashed at me. I'm screwing the community, I should be pushing people to .NET, not to Linux, I purposely killed the book market by creating a lousy website, I'm out to cheat my authors, I'm trying to kill FoxPro, I'm just a flat-out liar who has been stringing people along for years, I should be loyal to Microsoft, that sort of thing. I haven't been accused of beating my wife yet, but I'm sure that'll come.
>
>It's a natural reaction to an unpopular decision.
>
>I personally don't think that name-calling and cursing are appropriate - that childish behavior was never tolerated on the FoxForum - but maybe I'm just old-fashioned. (And that's why I don't hang out on the electronic forums anymore - disagreeing with someone is one thing, but abusive behavior and personal attacks aren't my style, so I don't get involved in the forums anymore. You can email me if you want to chat further, but I simply won't particpate in threads on the forums where being mean and nasty is accepted behavior.)
>
>I do have to smile at the purported underhanded motives ascribed to me by folks who have a view of only part of the market. Given my long-term involvement in magazines, conferences, books, user groups, forums, (and a couple of other areas I can't discuss publicly), I have better metrics on the size of the Fox market than probably anyone else on the planet. I started a database of Fox customers from the attendee list given vendors at DevCon in 1992, and have been adding to it ever since.
>
>I can look up your name and tell you what purchases you've made, how many times you've been to our website, if you've written to me about FoxTalk in 1999, what conferences you've been to, if you were an officer in a user group in 1994, or if you wrote for the third issue of the Cobb Fox User Journal. It's far from perfect, but it's a bigger, more complete repository of data than anyone else has. And as a result, I have hard numbers about the decline of the Fox market since the late 90s.
>
>I've made a good living with FoxPro from the early 90s through 2002. I billed over 15,000 hours in the 90's, to start with. And then we sold a bunch of books from 1998 through 2002. My authors and I have done pretty well - most of them have made more than twice what the average computer book author makes on a book. But over the past two years, the market has disappeared. Starting in late 2002, sales fell off a cliff, both in retail (70% of our Hacker's Guides were returned) and direct (website sales at Hentzenwerke and at Amazon were down nearly 80% from 2002 to 2003.) Our last few books on VFP have lost money. So it's no longer possible for me to support my family by relying on strictly on Fox.
>
>I saw this coming in the fall of 2002, and I've been trying to tell people to broaden their horizons since the beginning of 2003. And now that push has come to shove, people are getting caught unprepared and they're blaming me for it. Tsk, tsk. Sorry, but I'm not taking the rap for people who insisted on keeping their head buried in the sand.
>
>Fox has been good to many of us. We've made a good living, enjoyed what we've done, and made some good friends. My last three kids all learned to walk while wearing sweaters and carrying blankets received as gifts from folks who can hack an SCX faster than Microsoft can botch a FoxPro marketing initiative.
>
>And make no mistake - Visual FoxPro is a great tool - arguably the best development environment on the planet. It fits me like a glove and I hate to think about not having it available at my fingertips. It's the only reason I have a Windows workstation in my office at all.
>
>I am torn between the available alternatives. The one is learning new tools on Linux and making my migration complete. The other is continuing to work on making Fox work seamlessly on Linux, despite a few small technical hurdles and the omnipresent threats hanging over my head by You Know Who. That's not a good business decision, but I cringe at having to learn new tools when Fox is so good. I'll probably try to do both until circumstances dictate otherwise.
>
>Indeed, some of you will be using it for another ten years, making good money and loving every minute of it. In contrast, I see acquaintances at my son's Saturday morning soccer games who hate their jobs and see no way out. We've all been very lucky.
>
>Making a living with the Fox has been a great ride, and I'm sad to see it end. But the chapter is over, for me, at least, and it's time to start afresh.
>
>Whil
>
>Moving to Linux: Freedom, Choice, Security, Opportunity
>http://www.hentzenwerke.com

Chris McCandless
Red Sky Software