Bill, Yes, you need to know when something is broke to fix it.
I still remember when I first came to this list after just starting to learn VFP and laminated the fact that the query designer could not even be counted on to do anything more complex then a simple two table join without screwing up (and even that wasn't always possible). For a data-centric development tool, that was deplorable. I was quite pleased to see that significant work was done on the query designer in the next release and that someone listened. But if we had not done a little "bashing" on this list, in all likelihood it might never have gotten fixed. Jim. -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Bill Arnold Sent: Monday, March 09, 2009 4:43 AM To: [email protected] Subject: RE: Purpose of the list. MS bashing ----------- You could look at what I've said over the years about MS and call it bashing or warnings, depending on how you want to take it. I came into MS-land from decades of involvement with large systems as an IBM systems programmer, so I was well versed on the workings of these systems. When I decried MS's top-level approach to software engineering, and pointed to specific major failures, it could have been taken as hating or warning MS - depending on the intent. I'll say it now, if I haven't before, it was intended as warnings - not only to MS, but to us as well. Had Ed/the list filtered posts that could have been construed as MS bashing, those posts wouldn't have gotten through or perhaps not written. That said from the Big Picture point of view, in the smaller picture - our involvement with MS - I'm saying that VFP is like an island in the MS swamp. Sequences of it's instructions, once worked out, do work repeatedly and stably, owing to the technical excellence of the Fox team - which MS evidentially perceived as a threat to their money-making enterprises, so in another of their major management blunders they squished the marketing, and then further development of this superb product. But because "bloody instructions, once taught, return to plague the inventor", MS now has no real choice but to continue supporting VFP applications for a long time to come. This puts folks like us, with investments in VFP, in a good position because MS isn't going to rock our world again, so we'll have a stable dev platform for the foreseeable future. When the time finally does come to move on, we'll have better choices then we have today, and the logic we've sweated out and invested heavily in will be forward-portable, somehow. So it's MS, not us, that faces the bleaker future. MS was warned - or bashed, as it were, and here we are today. Freedom of speech ----------------- Ed founded ProFox in protest of the thought-policing policies of it's predecessor, and the flock happily and gratefully followed. Freedom of speech was the mantra, and nobody was to be denied this basic right. We all welcomed the breath of fresh air. But over time, it became clear that even the greatest of concepts come with weaknesses that can be exploited. In this case, ProFox, it's strength became it's weakness: the list attracted a fractional element of high-volume chatterboxes who spewed rubbish without constraint under the protection of Ed's unwavering free speech policy. Today, the world at large is suffering mightily over an analogous notion: that the free market should be unconstrained and left to it's own devices, that unwavering belief in simple, unmodified core concepts are our true guiding lights. Wrong, and wrong. As the economy and we have seen, total, unwavering allegiance to simple core concepts comes with holes that can and will be exploited. Lessons we must absorb and move to correct before the damage becomes irreversible. The economy has learned that without gov't (of/by/for the people) oversight, our financial system was wide open to exploitation, and now we are all suffering as a consequence of blind adherence to a well intentioned principle. If ProFox can learn similarly, there is hope. No, a thousand times no, not in the institution of "thought police", but in another institution: the jury of peers system. Month after month, year after year, the list stats show what must be apparent to most by now, that (not always, but) there tends to be an inverse relationship between quantity and quality: that those with the most to say tend to be those with the least to say. I can't speak for anyone but myself, so I can only say that the decline of my own interest and participation is a consequence of this relationship. I further presume that common wisdom has it that the decline in participation of thoughtful people is owing to the "demise" of FoxPro itself, and not to the effect I speak of. I think it may well be a combination, like a 1-2 knockout punch in a prize fight. Suggestion ---------- A suggestion is that we have a jury system, consisting of several, say five, of Ed's choosing, people who he annually appoints as overseers of the membership, with the authority to throttle and/or drop memberships considered by this group to be detrimental to the purpose of the list, stated as the betterment and advancement of the VFP community as a whole. If you've ever read the Little Prince, you'll recall he had the duty of picking the baobabs each day, lest they overrun his planet. Bill [excessive quoting removed by server] _______________________________________________ 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/7555c37fb4324e63b8aadf0c9f2de...@laptopii ** 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.
