On Tue, Jun 16, 2015 at 2:50 PM, Gene Wirchenko <[email protected]> wrote: > > Or maybe, Microsoft should quit cutting us off at the knees.
I really think we agree on this issue, but seem to be using different ways to say it. Microsoft as a vendor does not have my interests nor those of my clients at heart. Their means of making money is by forcing me to upgrade to products I don't need with features I don't want, and make me update software which was meeting my customer's needs, often breaking working software. For large and complex line-of-business applications, this can be costly to the point of infeasible. If a vendor so poorly meets my needs, I conclude I need to seek out other vendors. > Your argument could be used to say not to use VFP. Yes, it could, although I did not advance that point. VFP is a delightfully capable product that fits a unique niche. Unfortunately, VFP's owner is not interesting in promoting it. Again, if the interests of the two parties don't align... I worked very closely with Microsoft as an MVP, an active beta tester, a "partner" in various "Partner Networks" over the years, a speaker at their conferences, and an attendee at various NDA functions, in hopes of getting them to see that perspective. Overall, I think I helped prolong FoxPro's life. While the product had a long run, I've concluded I need to diversify the tools I can offer to my clients, for their benefit and mine. >> Commercial and proprietary OSes are going to do what they want to do, >> not what necessarily what you want. > > Do you really think that I do not know this? > You complained that a 1990's 16-bit utility built to run on DOS won't run in the latest 64-bit OS that includes a 32-bit emulator to run Windows-on-Windows for 15-year-backward compatibility. The CMD shell may look a lot like DOS, but it is not COMMAND.COM. DOS was built with a lot of assumptions that it owned the entire machine (all 640k!) and could do whatever it wanted, something you can't do in a cooperatively-multitasking machine with gigabytes of RAM and 2,4,8 or more CPUs/threads. If you want to run DOS, you ought to run DOS, either in a VM or an emulator. Windows hasn't run under DOS since Windows 98 (okay, WinME, but no one used that), so it's time to run DOS differently. I really think your question above, "2) Microsoft broke 16-bit software on 64-bit Windows 7. Why couldn't they have just kept the functionality?" has a pretty clear answer: it was not in their interests. Maintaining a 16-bit interface means a lot of very old and questionable code would need to be brought along and re-compiled in a new OS, introducing maintenance costs and security liabilities. Turning the question around, "why should they have kept the functionality?" I don't see that there was a downside to them to drop it. -- Ted Roche Ted Roche & Associates, LLC http://www.tedroche.com _______________________________________________ Post Messages to: [email protected] Subscription Maintenance: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/cacw6n4vrejrzfd873n-42pcvuoognt4pdnx4d3xwcick4pv...@mail.gmail.com ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
