Hi Ricardo, Hi Bill, sorry I took a couple of days before answering, but I was moving to my new home (4th move in the last 6months).
> > Investors have already sent a message to M$, "we don't care". M$ has > certainly taken note of this message and is acting accordingly. > > ------------------------------------- > > I'm not talking about Wall Street investors, but software companies and > their customers, particularly the small ones who could barely afford the > expense of automation in the first place. They've got way too much on their > plates to even think about going back and replacing something they've > already invested precious time and money to implement because someone said > that someone else said that MS said FoxPro is dead? > Maybe I'm too pessimistic, but I see it differently. The M$ execs don't really care about customers. Why should they? They care about Wall Street. If some action of theirs causes actions to rise or costs to go down they'll be gratified. After some while, when the real consequences of their actions cause havoc, they can jump boat to another company and even get a huge bonus. The system is rigged this way. If they act as you say they will they'll be penalized (the execs, not M$) and some other exec will "make a kill" and displace them. Besides which, they can always say you can still run your app in the current W$ version, they are not cutting you off (and I think they would be right). > This "case" (if it comes to that) involves the unique nature of software, > and there's much more that can be said about it, but let's hope that MS > hears an appeal for some kind of statement saying they will continue to > support running VFP applications for the life of Windows and put an end to > speculation. The "life" of W$???? Forever ?!?!?! Are you out of your mind? BTW, M$ is not a person. The ones you hope will "hear an appeal for..." are the M$ execs, and to be honest, I don't think they give a damn about your appeals, they just care about their careers and their bank accounts (otherwise they would be socialists, wouldn't they?). > > LOL > Have you put your socks by the chimney yet? Santa's coming! > > --------------------- > > I can understand your pressimism. We live in very difficult times. > Realism is many a time labeled as pessimism or skepticism by those who refuse to face reality. ----------------------------------------------------------- The full scope of this discussion, as you point out, involves political as well as legal and technical considerations. Politics is OT, so I'll skip the capitalist/socialist part, as germane to this discussion as it may well be. Legally, there is a huge amount of money involved here, more then enough to attract a lawyer who can build a case on MS's deceitful handling of FoxPro. I don't know if a lawyer has ever said "you show me a pattern of deceit in business, and I'll find a crime in there", but it's easy to imagine this to be true for a legal system based on common sense. Technically, I really don't think MS is going to do something that will break running VFP9 applications in any time frame we have to worry about. To characterize this time frame as "for the life of Windows" is probably as irrelevant as a guess at a number of years. What matters to us is continuity (protection) of our investments, not how long it takes, but that it get done. Fortunately even today we're not without resources. One is VM, another is something like Christof's Guinea project, and then there's technology that may not exist yet, such as a language converter (doable!) to another language/paradigm. Given the trajectory of computer technology to date, it's fair to say that we'll see some really big changes in the years to come. Just look at what the Internet did in about a decade. A recent look into what's happened with mainframes since the PC came along was a pretty pleasant surprise (much smaller and cheaper, yet still every bit as organized). But even anticipating more large changes, what actually happens will have still more surprises. The world is loaded with intelligent and industrious people who have access to these tools and are in the market for problems to solve. FoxPro's future happens to be an excellent challenge for some moneyed group to take on. It's worldwide, with many thousands of existing applications ripe for the picking, and it would mean a battle with MS that some might relish. Some positive thoughts: - no matter what happens we get to work with the most amazing tools ever invented. - the software designs and logic we work out today with FoxPro are the key ingredients for software applications regardless of language, so as long as we are continuously improving processes for our customers we're ahead of the game Bill _______________________________________________ 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/a0ae8022c97544779aa75aab1b296...@bills ** 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.
