Dave, > 1. The reasons that MS absorbed FoxPro to begin with are > rooted in the late 80's and early 90's, or in Internet terms, > the Jurassic. FoxPro's shelf-life has exceeded almost every > other tool out there; it has had an unusually long run.
And it's still alive and well. And, no matter what MS does or doesn't do at this point, the genie is out of the bottle. > 2. Microsoft has changed direction since those times, and are > much more Enterprise focused; this is where the most money is > to be made, which is useful because they are a business. MS claimed the desktop and IBM basically surrendered it (and even uses Windows, although I think that will end around the time Linux is ready for the desktop). Yes, MS grew and the enterprise beckoned, but, as I said, that will be MS's Waterloo, primarily because IBM is organized around SMP, but also because (and I say this with sadness) the IBM environment is highly secure and controlled. > 3. Microsoft makes money on product churn; see Windows, MS > Office , etc. Developer tools need to be churned regularly to > keep revenue flowing. That is the model for that part of the > business. Damn them for it! There should have been Windows 1, 2, 3, ... Had they designed interfaces correctly in the first place, they could have grown each in an orderly, building block fashion. Instead they pulled the "out with the old, in with the new" trick one too many times. 4. .NET will be replaced one day by the > next-greatest-thing-in-software-development; it will have a > learning curve that dwarfs .NET. Yup. > 5. This will be the way of things as long as folks vote with > their wallets. I don't know what you mean by that. A company like MS needs product developers more then anything else. What all their churn has produced are tons of anti-MS sentiment among developers, and that's just in the US. Europe has a bunch of problem with MS, and countries such as China - I think - are quietly going about the business of tunneling underneath the giant. > The more things change, the more they stay the same. I dunno ... Computers and technology in general are shaping the Brave New World, and I think we have a serious responsibility to get involved in the process or we'll be very sorry we didn't. Bill > Dave _______________________________________________ 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.
