Rick,

>>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?
>
>I think that in most cases it doesn't work that way. Most innovation doesn't come from proprietary algortithms but from a vision of how something should work. Once that's figured out reverse engineering is mostly a matter of reconstruction. Having a product that sells publicly basically opens you up for that as anybody can see how a feature works and potentially how it should be implemented.

I agree with you that it's not in most cases. Does it mean that the other cases should'nt be taken care of?


>Unless you have truly proprietary algorithms (which very few apps have) I doubt that this is really an issue, just the typical paranoia of companies that think the only advantage they have is in their code (in which case they shouldn't be in business).

So you decided that they should'nt be in business? PLEASE be serious for a minute. I'll use a phrase made popular by another UT user "You have to think outside the box" <g>.

Just an example: Let's suppose many professionals got together and developed over many years a software that would be able to detect cancer in advance. You give the software numbers from different analysis (blood, urine...) and the software tells you if you will have cancer and if it's the case what needs to be done to reverse it. If you were a professional in that group would'nt you like to protect the source code? In that case don't you consider that the only advantage here is in the code?


>Further you can obfuscate code both in VFP and .NET. Yeah you have to pay for this, but if you have a need for this a few hundred bucks should hardly be a deterrent?

Any name you can share (VFP and .Net)?

>>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>
>
>Dude, what's meaningless to you? You need to get outside more or something (apparently true from your vacation comment <g>). Improvements in development tools are incremental. Go back and code in Fox 2 DOS or Windows for a while, or even Fox 6 and compare the experience to 8 or 9. A development tool is to help you do your work more efficiently so that you can take your IDEAS that you have and conceptualize and implement them. Ultimately it's up to you not the tool to build it.

Here again perhaps you don't understand what I meant? or you just find it funny to twist things around so that you look good and you also find a way to make me look bad.

Sorry if you did'nt understand. I'll make it shorter and I hope that you'll understand.

Why do you think there are major improvements in .Net? Don't you think it's because there are worthy competitors? The only time you'll see innovation for anything is when there's competition. Remove that competition and you have a monopoly. That is not always a bad thing. But it becomes a bad thing where there is an abuse of that monopoly.


>There's no free ride - you're the one who's in charge and the tool is just that: a tool to help you in the process.

So you're the one in charge?

How is it going with your app using voice recognition (no keyboard and no mouse necessary anymore)? You never wrote one because the tools are not totally there yet? Are'nt you the one in charge?

We're not the ones in charge. Makers of the development tools are in charge. Then we have to work with what they give us.