Shedding Some Light

Tuesday is a busy and very long day here in Anaheim. Lots of news from LA area with the fires, but it is northwest from where we are.

The first session of the day is Kevin Ragsdale’s “Best Practices for Deploying Visual FoxPro Applications.” You should be aware of my passion for the topic since I helped write the book Kevin used as part of his research on the topic. He formally recognized the work Rick Borup and I did on the Deploying Visual FoxPro Solutions book he considers essential reading (I agree {g}). He also recognized the work Rick Borup did at GLGDW 2006 on the same topic. Kevin then went through several best practices and shared his deployment successes and failures. One of the things I like to do is learn from other people’s mistakes so I can avoid them, especially with deployment. Kevin made several excellent points during the session and I thought he did a good job. Several people talked to me about our book after the session. It is nice to get the word out about it.

The next session I attended was suppose to be “Simple SharePoint Solutions”, but it was replaced with “Customized SharePoint Sites with ‘Features’.” The two presenters got together a decided the timing should be switched. I was curious more about the solutions, so I bailed out after a short time and went to get some work done. I have already seen Tamar’s session called “Practical Tips for Working with Existing Visual FoxPro Code” before, but I am going to read her white paper because I am living this with a new customer and their FoxPro DOS code. I hope they will move to VFP and SQL Server some day.

After lunch (which several people did not like, but I enjoyed because there were lots of veggies) I skipped Doug’s session on Inno Setup because I have seen it a couple of times already. It is a great session. You can read some of the material in the last couple issues of Advisor Guide to Microsoft Visual FoxPro. It is a fantastic session. The first time I attended I was making changes to my scripts in the session.

Up next was my session “Microsoft VFP Debugging Essentials.” I was not happy with the delivery of this session at all and it was reflected in a couple of the evals. I did not have the energy I normally like to deliver because I had a headache that made me feel dizzy while I was presenting. I was able to communicate, but as one eval correctly stated: “This was not one of Rick’s best sessions.”

The last session of the regular day was Tamar’s “The Why and How of Test Data.” This was another session I was really looking forward to before the conference and is one we selected for Southwest Fox 2007. Tamar shows you why and how to auto generate test data using third-party tools, and her own framework. I have a real need to generate some test data for a couple of projects I am working on so I can use this session as soon as I return home. Highly recommended session.

Right after Tamar’s session we were picked up and attended the LA Fox meeting out by LAX. This was fun. We listened to an interesting presentation by a couple of guys from GeneXus. GeneXus is a suite of development tools that generate applications from it own IDE into source code in VFP, .NET, Java, and several other platforms I cannot recall. At the same time it generates the application it generates the database in VFP, SQL Server, MySQL, and many other popular database backends. It definitely looks like an interesting product. The thing I like about it is the one source (they call the source code a KnowledgeBase) and many different “buzzword compliant platforms.” I was curious what target platform has the best performance, but they did not have any metrics. I have always been skeptical about code generators, but this one definitely looks like it is mature. The product has been around since 1988 and is very current. I am still skeptical, and the cost is a little steep (US$5000), but looks very powerful at the same time.

We had a good view of the fires in LA from the office where the LA Fox meeting takes place and watched it while we ate pizza during the break.

Following the presentation from GeneXus, Tamar, Doug and I did our 20-minute mini-sessions. Tamar demonstrated an app she is working on and how she is using GDIPlusX from VFPX to capture screens shots and print them on a VFP report. I covered Southwest Fox and the user group offer we are doing, and rapidly went through some of the VFPX projects in a quick overview. Doug followed me with part of his VFP and Vista session. It was a fun night. We got back to the hotel around 11:30 and I rehearsed my morning session before hitting the pillow.

More to come…

The conference started out with Alan Griver’s keynote. Alan did a great job. He started out by restating the no VFP 10 announcement (Alan is a brave man {g}) in case there were people who had not heard about it. I was surprised by the number of people who did not know about the announcement. There was no loud screaming or angry mob mentality. More importantly, Alan also showed all new material from SP2 and some of the issues fixed for Vista that the Fox Team is working on. One of the cool things he showed is the new toolkit Microsoft released last week to allow developers to build controls in VB.NET that can be used in VFP forms. This really has a lot of potential for VFP developers who want to leverage new controls not available in VFP. Alan demonstrated the VB menu control and coded it to display a .NET messagebox. Nothing fancy, but something very important moving forward. I enjoyed the keynote.

I attended a couple of Sharepoint sessions that were not so good. Mostly because the presenter got into “presentation hell” when their virtual machine was not booting successfully. I felt bad for him and headed to the speaker room where I got some client work done.

The next big session of the day was the session I really anticipated since I heard Doug was working on it: “Develop Microsoft Visual FoxPro Applications for Windows Vista.” It was the session that paid for the conference, okay, it paid for the non-billable time I am spending here. Doug detailed the good and the bad things, and showed us workarounds for many of the issues as we wait for SP2 to ship. For the most part you can read Calvin’s blog and see how Calvin is attacking the Vista issues presented so far. Calvin is directly working on community reported problems. Doug’s session addresses security issues, the User Access Control, Virtualization (advantages and disadvantages), installing applications and where to put the files, user interface problems, how to simply address fonts, customizing the Vista Task dialogs, and other issues he has faced. It was a fantastic session and one I think everyone should see at some point in the near future (hint, hint, it will be at Southwest Fox).

The last session of the day was Kevin Ragsdale’s session “Using InfoPath with Visual FoxPro.” Kevin did a good job and showed how you can use InfoPath as a front end to FoxPro data. He showed a VFP form and an InfoPath form that accessed a Web Service he developed using the express edition of Visual Web Developer. We are talking about a Web service developed by the creation of a ASMX file you could edit in NotePad. Interesting session. I just wish Kevin had the white paper done so I could read it when I return home (one of my pet peeves, in case you were wondering). He promises it will be done soon.

The evening was filled with a long walk and dinner at Buca di Beppo. I also watched part of the Jazz-Warriors game and learned the Pistons kicked the Bulls behinds again. With the Red Wings winning the series against the Sharks it looks like my spring is going to be packed with playoff games to watch. {bg}

Tuesday evening (tonight) we are headed to the LA Fox meeting to listen to the speaker (I hear the topic is going to be interesting). Doug, Tamar, and I might do 20 minute mini-sessions back-to-back after he is done. A VFP smorgasbord.

I do want to clarify something I have read about on ProFox where it was discussed that there are 35 attendees here. Actually there are 35 VFP attendees, but there is not a 1-to-1 ratio of speaker to attendee. The VFP track has 5 speakers so the ratio is 7:1. It should be noted on a slightly positive note the VFP track has the most registrations of all the tracks according to what I have heard through someone who talked to Advisor.

So far it has been a great conference.

The Hennig Travel Curse (for those not familiar, Doug has a habit of getting delayed during his air travel) was in play today and we learned it can have far reaching effects. Doug and I were on the same flight by pure coincidence from Minneapolis to Orange County. Our flight was delayed by the controllers in Minneapolis as they attempted to route us around some of the nasty storms in the center of the country today. They realized it would take 2300 pounds of additional fuel when they calculated the new flight plan. So they decided to let us take the original flight plan. They think the route is dangerous until they calculate the costs {g}. Fortunately the delay was only 30 minutes. It was some of the worst turbulence I have experienced, but nothing to be concerned with. It did make it tough to code at times though.

When we arrived at the hotel we ran into Alan Griver in the lobby of the Marriott Anaheim. Alan flew in from Seattle today, but his plan had problems as they approached Portland and had to return to Seattle. Now this is the first time we have a hint of the Hennig Travel Curse impacting others, but we will start to keep some statistics to see if it was a fluke or the beginning of a trend.

The hotel is nice, the food at lunch was terrific, as was the company (Alan joined Doug and I for lunch). We talked about some of the recent events in the community, and some projects we are working on.

I am looking forward to a great week. I will try to blog as much as possible, but I am unsure how many sessions I will be attending outside of my own based on the workload I am experiencing. More to come…

(I apologize for the length of this post in advance)

I want to thank all the people in the Fox Community who took the time to personally try to convince me to sign the MasFoxPro Letter to the Microsoft Executives, and those that respected my alleged decision not too, and those who said it did not matter to them. As I was telling one of my newest development tool customer’s today, my decision was made on Monday and signing the letter was one of the 18 things to do on my list from Monday.

Here is my thinking about my decision process:

MasFoxPro Letter (“petition”)
The MasFoxPro Letter to the Microsoft Executives states three ways VFP could be developed further. I disagree with one of the points, and think the second and third ones are a struggle for Microsoft in the long term. I think understand the reasons Microsoft decided the future of VFP. I am not sure the points in the letter solve the problem.

Open Source VFP:
Microsoft has repeatedly stated they will not give up the Intellectual Property (IP) known as VFP because the technologies are leveraged in other tools, languages, and databases. I fully understand the protection of this IP having been a victim when one individual and one company stole the IP from my company. The competitive loss from a financial and intellectual perspective are significant. Imagine if your competitors just removed part of your revenue stream from under you because someone asked you to release your source code. I think all software developers can all relate to this. If you owned Rushmore and it was integrated in three products you were actively enhancing, would you let your competition get a look at it? I am sure it is more than just Rushmore.

Second, I know there are only a small percentage of developers in the Fox Community who could take the source code from Microsoft and support and enhance it. I am guessing less than 3% of the developers who write VFP applications and tools are capable or even interested in writing a language (XBase and SQL), the IDE, and the supporting XBase tools. Even if it is Open Source with the appropriate license so the developers could sell it for profit I doubt there is enough brain power willing to pull this off. That said, even if we could find 10 people to form a new Fox Team, it would be a long time before they could release VFP 10.0 and I suspect the momentum would be lost. That is not even taking into account the fact some companies want a large company like Microsoft backing the tools they use.

Form a partnership with a third-party to continue development
Interesting possibilities, but I think Microsoft is risking the IP issue again. The tried this with FoxPro for Unix and this was not a strong success story. On the other hand, with this option you would get dedicated resources and could build a profitable business model. I believe the support and partnership with Microsoft could bring credibility to the product that would be lost if the source code was released to an open source project.

Microsoft continuing development of VFP
While I think this is the optimal solution desired by the community, I have my doubts this is possible from a resource perspective. My general thinking on this follows the line of working on the same project for an extended period of time is hard on developers. I have not talked to the developers on the Fox Team about this particular issue, but most developers I know who work in the same code for 3 or 4 years get bored. The core VFP team has done it for longer than this and there are parts of VFP that are more than 20 years old. Having a stable core is an absolute necessity. Remember the instability of VFP 3.0 with all the new code to make Fox “visual” and a new database engine? I don’t have time to fight instability.

I think Microsoft would need to develop a plan to rotate new C++ developers into the team on a regular basis. There are risks in doing this for sure, but it allows developers to move on to bigger and better challenges, which I think all developers look forward to once and a while. The Fox Community has been extremely lucky people like Calvin Hsia, Aleksey Tsinqauz, and Richard Stanton (he is a relative newcomer to the group) have been around for so many releases. The guidance of Randy Brown was not really appreciated until he left. The Tech Support team of Jim Saunders and Trevor Hancock rounds out a rock solid foundation with the team.

So the tough question begs: what C++ developer wants to work on the Fox Team? You have a VFP product that is not strategic in Microsoft, or you could be working on something like SQL Server or the “popular” .NET that have roadmaps with “infinite” lifetimes. Few developers might choose VFP, but from a career growth choice, is this the best move? The good news is VFP apparently takes fewer resources than other development platforms so we only need a few good people to step up.

Summing it up
Even though I disagree with some of the proposed solutions, in spirit I believe in the general consensus about wanting VFP to be continued and enhanced. I am not a solidarity type of person even though I live in a huge union town. I do however get passionate about causes and will get behind one I believe. I normally do things I think will make a difference, and participate in the things I think have a positive impact on our planet.

Do I think this will change the things at Microsoft. Nope. In fact, most of the people who contacted me about MasFoxPro also feel the exact same way. I am not in the minority on this. But I think the important part of this campaign is not to change the minds of Microsoft, rather it is sending them a message about abandoning customers (bad!) and letting them know how much we care about VFP.

The only way I believe this decision can be changed (and I think this is not possible) is to give Microsoft a number of reasons how VFP can be enhanced. I am not talking about removing the 2GB limit on tables and memo files (this has been solved with different backend databases). I am talking about features that matter and will sell the product to VFP developers. I can count on both hands the number of developers who have really answered the question: “Name me five ‘back of the box’ features Microsoft should add to VFP in the next version?” Most developers will mention the 2GB limit (won’t sell Microsoft), some talk about OOP menus (see VFPX), some talk about a modern IDE (I would like some of the IDE features in the .NET UI), but for the most part the wish lists posted have minor things in them that we as a community can add ourselves, or are very obscure and not beneficial to most developers.

So there you have it. I am signing the “petition” after posting this, and then I am back to work all evening long to catch up on the to-do list that seem to be growing.

In closing, I will reinforce my position – we need to direct our energies toward moving VFP forward with or without Microsoft. We should not be splitting the community over a silly “petition”. I stated this before: it does not matter that Microsoft is calling VFP feature complete. The community is powerful and resourceful and can do more as a whole than 10 of the smartest people I know working inside Microsoft (still known as the Fox Team).

The organizers of Southwest Fox have always supported FoxPro user groups over the years. All three of us have presented at user groups across North America and two of us are directly involved in the day-to-day operations of our local user groups.

So we sat down and tried to figure out a way for Southwest Fox to benefit the FoxPro user groups. Normally you see conferences like Southwest Fox offer attendees a discount off the registration. While this is nice for the attendees, it really does nothing for the user group, and is a pain to deal with administratively.

With this in mind, we came up with a new concept for user groups to make money by getting their members to attend Southwest Fox 2007. Basically, we will help the user groups by giving $25 back to the group for every member who attends our conference. We figure most user groups can use the cash to cover expenses of the organization, or can help cover the costs of travel for outside speakers (we know most groups cover these costs).

All the details are on the Southwest Fox Web site, check out the “User Group Discount” link in the site menu. I think we figured out a painless process to administrate this discount.

This is a really cool way for us to show our support and give back a little to the Fox Community.

Don’t belong to a Fox user group yet? What are you waiting for? Not one in your area? Drop me an email, or give me a call and I will be happy to talk about my experiences in helping set up the Detroit Area Fox User Group and running it for more than a decade.

Sessions, Speakers, Sponsor, Registration is open, and Scholarship news!

It is my extreme pleasure to announce the sessions and speakers for Southwest Fox 2007 are posted on the conference Web site. Check it out. See how blessed we are to have a great speaker lineup offering great topics during the conference. I am very geeked by the knowledge these individuals are bringing to Southwest Fox in October. The line up is very strong and packed with expertise.

The sessions are top-notch material you will be able to us immediately in your VFP development. The presenters know we require each session to have a white paper you will be able to reference when you return home.

You can review the sessions by speaker, by track or alphabetically. Sliced and diced. We have color coded the tracks so you can see what sessions belong to what track.

I also get to announce our first sponsor – West Wind Technologies. Rick Strahl has been one of the brightest stars in our community and has really stepped up to support our conference as a sponsor, and is hosting a Web Connection 5.0 training session a couple of days before Southwest Fox at the Arizona Golf Resort and Conference Center. You can make it a two-for-one trip with some Web Connection training as the opening act and Southwest Fox as the second act.

Registration is now open. We have a bank of operators waiting in our call center ready to take your call. OK, we have one operator waiting in my office ready to take your call. But seriously, if you are trying to be the first to register, the opportunity might be available. I know you are all a very competitive bunch {g}.

White Light Computing Scholarship – this is not on the Southwest Fox Web site yet (because I forgot to tell Doug to add it)… White Light Computing will be offering a $300 scholarship again this year to one attendee. The name will be drawn from all the attendees who register during the early-bird period (ends July 1, 2007). More details to be posted soon.

So get in early, save US$75 on the registration fees, get one free pre-conference session, and a chance to get more than half of the registration cost covered by my company. Hope to see you in Mesa in October. Only 170 days to go!

(updated to link to the SWF 2007 Web site)

I did a bit more research yesterday and reviewed most of the MasFoxPro wiki Web site. All the posted messages reference signing a petition so I was looking for the legal petition. I could not find it. I found ideas, wishes, the letter to the Microsoft executives and some discussion, but no petition. So I emailed Pablo Roca (one of the organizers of MasFoxPro) and asked for some clarification and a link to the “petition.” Pablo was kind enough to send me a link to the Letter to Microsoft Executives.

Well that cleared up a lot of confusion on my part as I was looking for this petition thingy. Pablo and I exchanged several great emails and with it I have an better understanding of what the MasFoxPro movement is trying to accomplish and what they really want from Microsoft. In addition to my email exchange with Pablo, some comments on my blog, and reading some of the additional comments from the Fox Community on Doug Hennig’s blog I think I have a better understanding of the issues at hand.

One of the reoccurring themes from angry and not-so-angry people in our community is they want a clearer explanation of why VFP will no longer have dedicated resources within Microsoft. I think Tod McKenna has bullet pointed this best:

All I want is:
(a) continued VFP development, or
(b) a good solid, no-BS reason why VFP was dropped, or
(c) a decent migration path for the dozens of VFP Apps I have floating around.

There is no doubt that I would like to see VFP development continue. This is something we can all agree on. I don’t want anyone to misinterpret any of my writings about the future of VFP to be anything different than I would like to see VFP flourish and be enhanced. The difference I might have with some people is that I believe it can be enhanced and flourish with OR without Microsoft.

I definitely don’t want a decent migration path for my apps to another Microsoft tool or platform. I have worked on migrations in the past (IBM OS changes breaking JCL and COBOL apps is one simple example from the far away past, FoxPro 2.6 DOS and Windows to VFP is one I am living today) and I know it is better to rewrite the applications than to migrate them to a new platform in some magical/automated way.

As far as the reasons Microsoft is stopping future development of VFP and getting a clearer explanation of the reasons: I can understand this, but I believe Alan Griver has regurgitated it over and over on the various forums and his blog. Is the reason the Fox Community is asking for a better explanation because Microsoft gave a convoluted one, or because they did not like what was stated? I think part of the confusion is the fact it was stated so many places and in different message threads, so maybe it would be best for Alan to restate it once so the community is ultimately clear on the reasons.

I still have not decided whether I am going to sign the Letter to Microsoft Executives. I have many more thoughts on this that I plan to share this week as time allows (I am up to my elbows in alligators at the moment) and still have to PDF form-ize the Southwest Fox registration form before it goes live tomorrow. Most of these thoughts are in the emails back and forth with Pablo, but I need polish them up. When I get through most of the 18 items for today’s To-Do list (yes, this is an actual number) I will sit down and blog some more.

Ouch, I really have to come out of my office more often to ensure my integrity is not being called on the carpet. {g}

I have literally been living in a bubble the last four weeks trying to keep my head above water with three new VFP projects, numerous other projects I am working to secure, working on preparing to hire someone, three user group presentations in the last couple of weeks, preparation for the Advisor Summit, all the work we are doing behind the scenes with Southwest Fox 2007, getting one child to determine where she is going to college, moving another one back home, and the normal everyday family life. I barely had time to keep up on forum and blog reading. Heck, I have not even fixed the light fixture in the kitchen and have been eating in the dark for the last three weeks.

So for those who questioned my integrity on “being silent”, you should have called me before jumping to these broad and inaccurate conclusions. Those who really know me, know how much I dislike getting into the political stuff in the Fox Community. I dislike it so much most people think I am naive about certain “problems” in the Fox Community, and certain “problem posters” on various forums. Guilty. I avoid them because the majority of the time it is too negative for me to deal with it. I am of the believe that a positive lifestyle and positive actions lead to positive results and draws positive things toward you. I also believe in the opposite: a negative lifestyle and negative actions lead to negative results and draw negative things toward you.

I am not saying I am completely in the dark on the petition because I received an email on practically every publicly know email address I have announcing it. I just have not had time to really look at the petition in detail. Without knowing the specifics, I know I wish the organizers well and positive results. But as with any legal document, I don’t sign until I understand what I am signing, and I certainly do my homework before backing any cause. I am someone who gets both or all sides of a story.

So I read Doug’s blog entry (Why I Haven’t Signed) and earlier saw Alex’s blog (Developers petition Microsoft to reconsider FoxPro phase) defending their actions to not sign the petition. I headed online to the UniversalThread and the Fox Wiki to do some reading this evening even though I should probably be working on my projects. Ouch. I see a few people are calling out certain MVPs and the other highly visible people in the Fox Community who have not signed the MasFoxPro petition, and are questioning the integrity of these individuals. Ouch.

I can clear up several of the “fact-less accusations”:

1. Alan Griver (or anyone from Microsoft) did not call me or communicate to me in any form the need to “defend MSFT’s spin”. Microsoft never has asked me to write specific words or say anything on their behalf. Period.
2. Microsoft did not ask me to not sign the petition. Even if someone had asked me I would not let it guide me one way or the other. Just like someone telling me to sign it will not get me to sign it.
3. “I assume because they are friends of YAG and Ken Levy and don’t want to jeopardize their relationship with M$FT.” – absolutely not true. First of all, I don’t think signing this petition would hurt any perceived relationship I have with Microsoft. Ken Levy is far removed from the Fox Team these days and is already two jobs off the Fox Team. Why would I care about affecting this relationship? I have known Alan for years. I do not agree with everything Alan says or does. Heck, I don’t agree with everything my wife says or does. This does not mean I don’t speak out when I disagree. In fact, people who really know me know I will tell them exactly what I feel. I also know for a fact that one of the newest VFP MVPs directly called YAG after the announcement and provided a butt reaming (pardon my language here), earful for Alan to listen to. He was announced as an MVP weeks later. Alan does not control the MVPs and is not even ultimately responsible for picking them. Speaking out against Microsoft does not matter. More on this later.
4. I personally know most of the MVPs and several of them are close friends. I know their integrity and it should not be questioned. Flat out, those that question their integrity do not know them. A lot of them have privately expressed their concerns to Microsoft over the decision to not release VFP 10 . Most people have no idea what the MVPs and others are doing with respect to this decision. Obviously some have been very public about how they feel. It has nothing to do with the petition and has nothing to do with signing or not signing it.

Victor Espina stated on the Fox Wiki in the MasFoxPro topic:

“I think the main point here is: you can agree or not with MaxFoxpro initiative; what Pablo and many of US don’t understand is that you all could spend 1 min adding your signature to the petition even if you think it is pointless. The fact that most of you haven’t signed means that you, as part of VFP community, don’t care about what M$ did, even if they have their reasons or not.”

While I understand Victor’s passion and his desire for VFP development to be continued by Microsoft, I really think his cause and effect are incorrect. There are many reasons one might not sign the petition. I know most, if not all of us care a great deal about Microsoft’s decision to consider VFP feature complete. This inaccurate correlation is way off base.

There is another problem with Victor’s statement: if one thinks the petition is pointless you should still sign it. What? People have called out the integrity of people in the Fox Community on this issue, then tell others to blindly sign a petition they don’t agree with or have not completely read or understand? This is completely hypocritical. I doubt the decision to sign or not to sign for most individuals is even based on one thing. I seriously consider my actions as they impact others on this planet. I try to do things that are positive and things I believe will make a difference. I also take into consideration how I can best use the limited energy and time I have on this planet to make it a better place.

To further prove I am not afraid to call out Microsoft on poor decisions I provide three very recent examples:

1. When Microsoft announced SQL Server 2000 and MSDE 2
   0o0 were not supported on Windows Vista, I contacted Milind Lele and asked him to put me in contact with the SQL Server team. I spent hours via email explaining to the SQL Server team why I thought this was a horrible decision and how it hurts vertical market applications relying on the Microsoft vision of SQL Server everywhere.
2. I am currently in an email exchange with Microsoft Vice-president S. Somasegar with respect to his quote in ComputerWorld about VB6 and VFP developers:
   

   “Change is always a little hard. It’s hard to hear that you have to go and learn something else. Some of these transitions have been smooth, others not so smooth. We want to be mindful that when transitions occur, there is a good reason and real customer benefit to them.”

   Soma is a brilliant man, who in my opinion is not making a living working as an independent consultant or as an IT person, and is out of touch with reality when it comes to the investment of learning something new. It has nothing to do with learning something new as VFP developers have been doing this for decades. It has to do with making money, serving clients, using the proper technologies to solve real-world problems, AND keeping up with the rapid pace of change in our industry. I don’t know many careers outside of computers where you have to revamp it every 12-18 months.

3. I have been telling my customers not to move forward with Vista because it is not ready for prime time when even Microsoft’e own products (Visual Studio 2005, SQL Server 2005, and many others) were not working and were not patched to work when the OS was shipped to consumers in January. Third-party drivers are still not available for common hardware (not the direct fault of Microsoft). The new security features break most applications (not the fault of Microsoft directly). I think Vista is causing more trouble for businesses than it is helping today. I also think it will get better with time. It is just not ready for my clients and my team.

Being an open-minded person I understand both sides of the issues here and fully respect those who have signed the petition and those who have not. I have not decided what I am going to do yet. I can tell you I will consider it when I have time to address it and understand all the ramifications and benefits. I am sure it will be a topic of conversation next week at the Advisor Summit.

In the mean time I am still focused on the things I can control and the positive impacts I can make on the future of Visual FoxPro and the Fox Community:

1. Organizing Southwest Fox 2007 (and hopefully for many years to come)
2. VFPX Administrator, Project Manager, and developer
3. Working on Sedna and testing SP2/Sedna before they ship this summer
4. Developing VFP apps for my customers daily
5. Answering as many questions as I can in various FoxPro forums
6. Presenting at as many conferences as I can afford the time
7. Presenting at as many user groups as I can fit in each year
8. Mentoring VFP developers (I currently help 10 other developers directly on a regular basis)

Actions speak louder than words.

I certainly do not question the energy expended by those creating the petition and those promoting it. I applaud their dedication and current and future contributions to the Fox Community. I just wish those who are dabbling on the dark side of this issue would spend less time calling people out and questioning their integrity, and direct this seemingly endless energy into a positive project for the future of Visual FoxPro.

It is my belief and is something I predicted a little less than two years ago: someone will build another FoxPro clone, just like Fox Software did to kick the snot out of dBASE back in the 1980s. I said this not long after the VFP Roadmap was announced and feel with the recent Microsoft announcements that the market is primed for alternatives. We are seeing some public work from companies like etecnologia and their VFPCompiler for .NET, and even some rumblings from the old dBASE now owned by a company known as dataBased Intelligence, Inc. I am certain other projects are in the works.

Who knows what the future holds, but I know one thing for certain, a positive outlook and set of actions will
lead to a more positive outcome.