Hi Jos,

I should be more clear in my writing...

Not so much that they 'get' the sales of the OS and possibly Office or Word, but they get to have (a) reason for upgrades to those and (b) distance in that shop from LINUX.

I don't think for a minute that MS is worried about LINUX developers, but rather about replacement of Windows/Word with LINUX and equivalents.

I think VFP9 is great too, and a comment yesterday by someone that their application has been stable beyond belief since migrating to 9 is an excellent omen!

cheers

>Jim,
>
>I agree with the whole money angle, obviously. But to say that they get a Windows sale or a MS Office sale is unlikely. We all supply to a market that is already Windows based and MS Office is already the dominant office suite out there. I doubt that there are many VFP applications which are causing people to actually go out and buy a copy of WIndows or Office. How many VFP apps require end-users to buy additional Windows based PC's really?
>
>The Linux angle I think is reasonable but again I cannot believe that keeping a few hundred thousand VFP coders off Linux is a major concern for MS. They have .Net to keep coders happy.
>
>I think VFP is being enhanced and improved because there are (a) probably more VFP developers and VFP applications out there than we realize, (b) because it still serves an important market segment of smaller companies that do not need client-server, (c) becuase it probably does not cost MS that much to keep it going in respect to the revenue generated, and (d) because we love MS so much for this great dev tool and would hate them forever if they dropped it.
>
>btw I love VFP9 - Viva VFP!
>
>
>>SNIP
>>>
>>>Can I suggest another reason why DBF died? Because there's no money to make with it. I mean I buy VFP and that's it. MS makes no money after that. I do as many apps as I please and MS receives nothing from that.
>>
>>Well, not quite. They surely do not make nearly as much money as they would from SQL Server solutions, but they at least get the Windows OS sale and probably a MS Word or Office suite sale. And, much more important now than 5 years ago, they keep LINUX out of the shop.
>>>
>>>So the solution to this economic mess. Trash the DBF model as fast and as often as possible and push client-server processing. The result. MS sells client-server licenses. Oh yeah I almost forgot. MSDE is free. Is it really?
>>>
>>
>>This surely has been the "strategy", and may still be. But one hopes that the LINUX fear and some realization that there are hundreds of thousands of small shops contributing license fees to MS is now taken into account.
>>Of course all those non-Microsoft marketeers (we have several here) would not be a party to that part of the equation.