<snip>

>Sorry for the late reply. I was out on a short vacation.

Vacation? Oh yeah I remember that <g>


>XML is not a technology that has to care about security. Security belongs to a transport or and encryption layer. I won't pollute the XML standard with security concerns. XML Web Services maybe are lacking some of those things, but this is something the whole industry has to agree on, so it takes time; but they are working hard on it.

They should work harder <g>


>>Source code security for VFP. Nonsense. It should've been there with the first version. So now we would'nt be that concerned about ReFox, KonXise...
>
>I'm not so sure. I've used Fox since FoxBase, shipped thousands of executables, and never had a real problem with code security. Yes, you may have very specific and proprietary algorightms that needs protection, but for me (the company where I work as an Architect has an ERP suite with almost 30 different modules) the entry level is not related to source code. Do you want to be happy? .NET applications are as easy to reverse -engineer as VFP ones; maybe more.

The language is not important. It just has to be there. No excuses for providing tools that are not more secured at the base. Wether .Net of VFP.

Perhaps for you it's not important but in certain situations this is what makes a difference between being able to compete and just providing more (better) solutions to an already established leader in a given field.

Here's a concrete example of what I just said:

An enterprise works on an application where they found a way to do things that will make their application the best solution in a given market. So they release that application. It'll do ok for a while. That is until the market leader discovers that something better than what they're offering was released. But because they know that they can get a fast access to the source code for that app. they don't really panic. They just get the source code. With ReFox or some tool for .net. And they implement what was missing in their app. What is the probable result after what happened here?

The market leader stays the market leader and perhaps becomes even stronger because of the code that they took. The contender is'nt able to survive no more because they don't have the THING that made them so special. And the market leader makes sure that the contender does'nt stay in business by whatever means necessary.

The worst thing on this scenario is that less and less innovation is seen on development of applications because it is'nt worth it to make efforts just to see BIG CORPORATIONS get all your stuff leaving you empty handed.

What could or would change with better source code security:

The market leader sees that a competitor is doing a better job than what they're doing. because they can't have the source code they'll have to implement the same thing that the competitor is doing. But they can't do it as good as the that competitor. So because they can't do that as well they'll have to do other things if they want to get back the customers they lost to their competitor.

During that time the competitor finds other things to implement that the market leader was'nt doing. So here there's an innovation cycle going on and everyone benefits from that. The result will be better applications at better prices. Better prices because when somebody's alone in his market he can charge whatever he wants.

I think that you get my point now.

>>So that's what I meant when I said that we work with what we have and try to make the most of it. Until something better comes along.
>
>Yes, I guess there is still a lot of things to improve in VFP and any other tools. It will always be. But I guess the start of this sub-thread (I guess Rick started this) was about what features could be really VALUABLE to add to VFP. And in this sense, I think there should be something that everybody could benefit for, like the report engines improvements in VFP 9.

The lenghty description that I wrote before could be applied here. No competitors, no new features. No marketing, no sales. No sales, no more money to develop new versions of your favorite development tool. No more versions of one of your favorite tools. Less choices for development tools. Less choices for development tools, no new impressive features really necessary no more because there's only one development environment left <vbg>. So from that point you only see close to meaningless improvements. Just enough to justify the upgrade cost <vbg>