Hi Jim,

I clearly see your point and it's totally valid from your side of things. Way back before I joined MS I would post suggestions and bugs and never get feedback and it used to piss me off.

In a perfect world, we'd have the time and energies to participate in this new feedback mechanism. But it's hard to justify for us as we have a pretty good track record with the informal, communal methods we have now.

The vast majority of enhancements to VFP 8 and 9 are customer-driven. Those that have asked those things of us can see that. But, no, we can't respond to every customer with a request as to the status of the request.

Ken and I mulled this over again today and he showed me some stats and anecdotal information on what this level of support is costing other product teams and it's horrific...well, maybe not to them but it would be to us. If we implemented this for VFP, I'd have to schedule a full-time person to do nothing but monitor and adjudicate the feedback. I just don't have that person.

OTOH, as I mentioned before, I welcome any feedback on that channel you wish to post asking for VFP support. If we get thousands of posts asking for VFP participation then it gives me something to take to the bean counters to get the resources. I have no problem with that.


>I see your point and it is a strong one John.
>
>However, the big "feature" that the MSDN Feedback Center promises is right in its name - FEEDBACK.
>
>Having some way to KNOW that a submission as been successfully repro'ed and having some way to see what has been submitted overall are two aspects that the existing VFP-related methods do not provide to the average Joe.
>
>Those are the things that trigger my salivation.
>
>Jim
>
>
>>Hi Jim,
>>
>>The Ladybug mechanism was put in place largely because there was no clear means for those developer communities to impart gaffes and bugs to the product teams and this provides that.
>>
>>On the other hand, there are several avenues available to the average VFP developer to impart information to your product team. There's the UT, beta newsgroups (for the private beta users), and other means. As well, most of us know most of you, and - believe me - we all hear from our friends in the outside world on what's right and what's wrong.
>>
>>So, we believe that it's bureaucratic overhead we simply don't need. It will suck resources from us and accomplish nothing that we're not already accomplishing.
>>
>>Of course, feel free to post requests to add VFP. I'm not averse to this, just don't see a huge groundswell of support. If that groundswell materializes and I'm proven wrong - hey, great!
>>
>>
>>
>>>I have opened suggestion ID FDBK11025 there requesting that VFP be added to the products supported by the facility.
>>>
>>>These things, apparently, work by vote as much as anything else, so you might consider registering yours there.
>>>
>>>I find I get the entry directly by entering "FoxPro" as the Search field.
>>>
>>>cheers