> > I think that depends on how you look at how MS handled the whole > > VFP-affair. The way I see it, they lured people into investing in > > their language product KNOWING they weren't going to market the > > product, thus removing the usefulness of the very product they were > > selling as a useful tool. That's underhanded at least, illegal at > > most. > > > > Who's to say they didn't market it? Sure, they didn't market it well,
> but you can't say they didn't market it. They had it advertised on > their website; some publications mentioned it; Jim Eddins was a major > seller of it; etc. Underhanded or at least short-sighted, but > definitely not illegal...but hey, IANAL. I'm talking about their designs, their intent, which may very well have been to deceive, and there is law that covers fraud that might fit. IANAL either, but I believe law is based on principles and MS mgmt's behavior re VFP has been unprincipled, therefore there must be some connection between what happened and the law. Sure, they threw a few bucks into a website and other things, but if a simple comparison of marketing expenses for each of their products over the years shows that VFP repeatedly got a distinctly miniscule share, that says something about their intent. If records of meetings shows that people were told not to mention VFP, and if marketing reps were kept in the dark about VFP; maybe there's someone who was on the inside that would shed some light on the subject if asked; who knows what else can be found in a discovery process. > > Put it this way: if you would have known about MS's designs for VFP in > > the beginning, would you or anyone else have bought into it then? > > > We all must know that a day will come where our tool of choice is no > longer supported/offered, especially in the case of a commercial vendor > like M$. Open Source seems to beat that rap. Look at all those poor > bastards who banked on PeopleSoft only to watch Oracle buy them and put > their stuff in maintenance mode. I know there was talk of lawsuits if > Oracle dropped support for PS altogether, but with maintenance mode > (similar to the 2015 date by M$ for VFP), they avoid such legal headache > and still get what they wanted....control/suppression/obsolescence....legally. But there are some business practices that are illegal. I don't know about that particular deal - it doesn't sound good at all, but it might have been just the way things worked out without any underhanded scheming going on. In the case of VFP, I think MS mgmt pulled off a scheme that hurt some people. I suppose sometimes that's legal and sometimes not, but in this case I'm not inclined to give MS any benefit of the doubt. I think it's very clear now that their intent with buying FoxPro wasn't as they stated at the time, and to me that's lying. And if there is one lie, there are probably others. Lying, as I understand it, isn't necessarily illegal, but when people get hurt by it, I think that's what tort law is about, isn't it? A quick search on "when is a lie a tort" gets enough hits to say this isn't a nonsense thought. > > Fortunately we've got some number of years, maybe even a decade, > > before 'showtime'. A whole lot can happen between now and then. > > > > Very true. And Guineu might be the next coming of Christ for the VFP > faithful. ;-) Yup, that would be a wonderful thing! http://www.foxpert.com/KnowlBits_200611.htm Bill > Michael J. Babcock, MCP _______________________________________________ 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. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
