Metin,

In the last company that I worked for, we had this typical software salesman who actually knew very little about the features and functions of the product he was selling. He had some misguided thought process that it was a great idea to tell prospective clients when asked about a feature or functionality that he didn't know about, that it would of course be included the next version of our product. When I was there, I was the Dilbert guy sitting in the meeting as technical advisor who would usually jump in and say, Uh... John, we already do that... or if not, I would have to just sit there while John promised the moon and just cringe knowing we probably would have to include it. All the while thinking how stupid it was to promote vaporware and plant a seed that our current product is somehow incomplete and it is better to wait for the next version. The result of the sales call where the next version was actively promoted normally ended without a sale. Duh...Imagine that...

It would really upset John when I would correct him during a presentation to a customer, and heaven forbid that I explain why some new unrealistic "feature" would not be a good idea or was not possible, or explain that we do things in a different way to get to the same result.

Given the fact that MS has historically given hints of their on going development of the next version and in some cases have actually demonstrated it, this may be off base. I think we all have to accept the fact that VFP may be at or at least nearing the end of its development cycle and at this time MS may have to make some strategic decisions as to the future direction for VFP.

The future may be that VFP's best features are being rolled into DOT NET, or it may be continued for another version or so. I suspect that VFP's next version is not already in development, but that a decision will be made some time after VFP9 is released. If this is the last version, I don't really expect MS to immediately announce to the world that they have finally killed VFP, even though their marketing (or lack there of) has been doing that for several years. That would certainly short circuit potential sales of VFP9.

BTW, The moral of the story about John the software salesman is:
The only difference between a used car salesman and a software salesman is that the used car salesman KNOWS when he is lying.