On Friday, April 11, 2008 10:16 AM Bill Arnold wrote: >I understand that you don't understand, but what I don't understand is the MS-lackey role you're playing. MS doesn't give a hoot about >us, they just managed to painted themselves into a corner with VFP. Evidentially MS's plan all along was to buy out and kill VFP, but >the VFP team delivered a great product, which flew right in the face of Bill Gates' >plan to build around Basic from day 1. The whole .NET/CLR thing brought this to a head because at that time MS was forced to finally >choose between the Basic and xBase paradigms because .NET had to go one way or the other. The decision was pre-ordained and Basic got >the nod and VFP the boot.
Sorry, you don't remember the history of the purchase of VFP by MSFT. In the begging, there were 3 Xbase products - dBase, FoxBASE, and Clipper. Borland bought Ashton-Tate (haven't heard that name in a while). MSFT bought Fox Software shortly afterwards and CA bought Clipper. We should be grateful that the best of the bunch (IMHO) was not killed by MSFT like the other 2 companies did with the other products. At the time I thought it was a very positive thing for the Fox product to have the MSFT resources. Also, I remember at that time, Dr. Dave being interviewed about the future where you would have a single UI and the developer would get to choose which language to best use for the purpose of the application. Sounds like Visual Studio when it went from a suite of products to a single product (.NET). Yes, I think there was some political more than technical issue with VFP not being part of the CLR. I think they just figured it was too hard and it was too much like VB without the built in database engine. >MS isn't on our side, unless of course we get into their fold and re-write for .NET. MS's latest/last move with VFP have been crafted >for one reason: to keep the company from being sued by people like me who bought into their sales pitch when they assimilated VFP and >invested heavily in the FoxPro product development system - only to discover years (and many hundreds of thousands of dollars) later > that they had an ulterior motive all along. Had they been honest and up-front about their plan, we wouldn't be in the position we're >in today. Ask the folks who went to the DevCon in Florida (I missed it) where MSFT hijacked the keynotes with .NET presentations... The writings have been on the wall for a while that MSFT focus is .NET and not VFP... >What they did, in my mind, was totally underhanded but typical behavior. >It is with much irony that I admire Bill Gates, but I certainly do not like and will not accept being one of his victims. You always have that choice... >You want to promote MS, fine, but from my point of view you don't belong here. Who elected you president? >To anyone else, my effort is to identify and capitalize on VFP's strength in the marketplace and get around the obstacles MS has >created. >We do have options, despite what MS and their lackeys are saying. Agreed. David L. Crooks _______________________________________________ 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.
