Beautiful story, Elmer.
About the life cycle item:
I sell a product via the internet (shareware indeed). It can currently still be improved and extended, but I have no plans to extend it again and again and again. Extending it just for the sake of not letting sales die, just seems inappropriate marketing to me.
In the case of vfp I have the vision that the product might be 'complete' somewhere in the future. (I am not saying here that it is already complete.) When the time comes that it is complete, then no further big extensions can be thought of. What should ms do then?
Well, I think at that time they should tell to the buyers that the product is finished and that support is guaranteed for the next 30 years!! That promise alone would probably be a booster in sales. Updates would merely be adaptations to changes in operating systems and drivers, and these updates would be low priced. The promise of low priced updates would further boost sales.
Projecting all this on my own product: It will certainly reach a point that further development is very limited. But it will remain usable and therefore not really die. Updates will occur due to a changing operating system or essential driver, and such updates will gonna cost some money.
Groet,
Peter de Valença
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