Ed, > > MS's acquisition of VFP was like a marriage with kids involved. Sure, > > the marriage can break up and dissolve, but the kids have to be taken > > care of by the parents, like it or not. > > I don't know what you're smoking, but you got your > money's worth! ;-)
Haha :) > > The way I see it is simple: MS purchased FoxPro, promoted it (even less > > then whole-heartedly), convinced people to invest in it, they did, and > > then, years later after people have huge investments in the product, MS > > tells them to f**k off. > > More people "invested" in FrontPage than ever did in VFP. Those > folks were cut loose, without even a 7-year support plan. What did > they do? They moved to ASP and ASP.Net, just as Microsoft assumed > they would. I've invested in FrontPage too, and I still use it, with other tools, but I didn't lose any money over it. The "many people" you must be referring to are the 'average Joe's' who, like myself, put together some HTML using FrontPage - that's not an investment in the same league as the hundreds of thousands - or more - that a product developer can invest in a DBMS. > Microsoft is making a business decision, and has decided to stop > development of what is inarguably a very old product. They've given > you *7* years to find alternatives. I'm no Microsoft fanboy, but > that's hardly telling VFP developers to fuck off. English is "a very old product" too. Why isn't anyone talking about abandoning it? I think we see "old" in different ways. I'm inclined to think of old as mature, and of mature as good - because it's fleshed out and stable. Sure, I don't like the weird syntax and some bad naming choices used in VFP, but what's important is that in it's "matureness" it works. That's hardly the time to abandon a language. I wouldn't ask MS to add more commands or functions, and we can develop features ourselves. All we really need - and this is the point I believe is critical - is for MS to make provision for the continuity of VFP maintenance so we're not faced with any 'drop dead' date, and we need this in such a way as to be convincing for our customers - now that MS has made it's decision to no longer develop VFP. We can live with the 'no more versions', but we can't live without support when it's needed. > Bill, the writing has been on the wall for years. It was written in > a huge font, with lots of lighting to make it crystal clear to anyone > who cared to look. Many of us took that warning to heart, and learned > alternate skills to carry us into the future. You chose not to do > that, but to focus exclusively on VFP. Now it seems that you are > regretting your choice, but instead of taking responsibility > for your decisions, you're attempting to blame Microsoft. Frankly, I didn't think MS would shut it down as quickly as they did. I thought - and still think, that somehow out of this mess will come a picking up of the ball. Maybe Christof, maybe resorting to a VM implementation, but somehow this application will continue working as long as I'm in the business. > Paul and I wrote Dabo for people like you. It isn't a clone of VFP > by any stretch of the imagination, but it has the same sensibility > and approach to development that made VFP such a great tool. Take a > look at the screencast by John Fabiani and Larry Long, two long-time > VFP developers who have moved to Dabo: > http://leafe.com/screencasts/realworlddabo.html > It shows exactly the sort of rich client app that you have come to > expect from VFP, but it is written in a product that is 100% > open and free, and will run on Windows, Mac or Linux. Ed, I've never doubted what you guys are doing, but I've got 334,058 lines of VFP code in production libraries. Factor in design and documentation time, and it would take more years to re-write then I could even consider. Okay, one thing could change my mind: a VFP->Dabo converter > Change is inevitable. VFP was/is an amazing tool, but > it will never return to its former glory. I'm fine with what it does today. It provides the basic ingredients from which limitless features can be created. I'm not looking for new versions/releases - just maintenance - and I truly think that's not too much to ask for. Let's not forget that our Windows-based applications helped that company sell Windows, and we have been, in effect, MS salespeople all along. > You really do have to consider what > direction you want to take from here on in. You can cling to VFP > until it is no longer viable; that should take you at least a decade > into the future, but with an increasingly frustrating position. Well, whether I like it or not, that's the deal. And speaking for everyone with more then a casual investment in VFP, we deserve some provision for ongoing maintenance. I think that's reasonable and we should get it. > You can move to what Microsoft is offering today, knowing that that > should be good for another 2-4 years before they change it again. I'll re-write in another MS language around the day Hell freezes over! > Or you can use this opportunity to move to something that is not > shackled to the designs of the Microsoft Marketing Department; to > something that no one can ever "bury" as Microsoft has with VFP. Will a VFP->Dabo converter come to the rescue? <g> Bill > > -- Ed Leafe > -- http://leafe.com > -- http://dabodev.com > > > > [excessive quoting removed by server] _______________________________________________ Post Messages to: [email protected] Subscription Maintenance: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/[EMAIL PROTECTED] ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. 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