Hi there :)
That is so pesimistic !

>Not immediate death, because in the beginning many people will work with AMD/Intel EM64-bit PC and only file servers, where are large DBs will be pure 64-bit.

I don't think VFP or more precisely - XBASE heritage code will die at all !
It might change name, vendor, platforms ;-) etc , but something of that
sort will be ALWAYS there.

Future might bring changes but I think they will be for better !
Just as VFP3>9 upgraded xbase for the best up to now, unifying
armies of XBASE developers (Clipper,Fox,DBase etc) and brought in others
as well (Clarion,Unix/Sculptor and what else not) - some new XBASE PHOENIX will come again and be better and cooler then ever :)
I prefer this to be - VFP15 crossplatform again :) , but who knows it might be something else.

Why I am so sure?

Because there will be always market for that. Small and mid businesses
will be always there (they grow from small aren't they ?) and xbase apps
are exactly their shoe size. Sometime size smaller, but they fit.

Your expectations below do not sound realistic to me at all.
Webb apps will NEVER have 90+% of the market - unless EVERYBODY'S internet
becomes as fast as today's LANs, and now thin & pale webclients turn themselves into FAT Pigs, being able to swalow all those everyday production tasks for breakfast - just as thousands of apps (XBASE and others) do everyday. And they may as well be done in VFP :)

And for mobile devices, also No! You will NEVER see office
full of people beeping with their mobiles, palm tops, organizers etc.

Offices will always have :
1. Desks/Chairs/Phones
2. PCs
3. Printers

If nothing else, it is matter of productivity and plain comfort.

So if you want to be overfuturistic and overoptimistic like me,
let's together look fwd to future - 64bit(*2?) , crossplatform , VFP15 sometime in 2025 :))

Cheers
Sergio

>
>Second issue is expectation that after 2010 80-90% of the business will be web-based. This means - large DB and webapplication hosted at some server.
>VFP is extreamely useful for datacentric stand-alone or C/S apps, but .Net(which has 64-bit version) is archtectured for web applications.
>Expectations are that most of end user devices will be small Notebooks, PocketPC(PDA) or SmartPnones, where VFP do not works at all :-(
>Do not expect M$ to listen any cries. They listen some and in newest VB will be implemented many of VFP data processing features and they will continue to add some of nice VFP features in .Net framework, but I do not expect M$ to go beyond VFP10