Microsoft: No Visual FoxPro 10

CDFAUX

An official announcement of MICROSOFT: http://redmondmag.com/news/article.asp editorialsID=8320

Although all the signals pointed in this sense, obviously the official confirmation is a bad news.
I believe that still lack clarity in the communication of Microsoft.
I understand that SEDNA tries to leave liberated to the community the future development of VFP, but if the intention of Microsoft is sincere, it should also release the source code of VFP under Open Source.
Anyway the support up to 2015 assures us 8 years of survival, and anything indicates that it cannot be continued later on, like it happened to VB6 although new versions have not been released for a lot of time.

I wanted to know other opinions.

dni

Vfp is a mature language with very much facilities and can be used many years from now. Only a operating system after Vista can stop it but I don��t think so. If MS will not continue to develop it, there will be others. There are also xdbase variants.

CDFAUX

Hello DNI.
I think similar: we will be able to use VFP9 during many years.
But I find something incoherent the existence of the project SEDNA based on the core of VFP9: that new things are made for a frozen platform.
VFP (6,7,8...9 ) it is a mature platform, but SEDNA it is still in beta.
And it is probable that no xdbase is able to support its extensions.
If I have an application in VFP6 and I need to make a new version: is sense make an effort in passing to VFP9 - SEDNA
I believe that it would be better if MICROSOFT releases VFP under OS, allowing that the community decides the future of the product.
It would be the only form of guaranteeing the future of the tool.
Although surely that would be ridiculous: in a future VFP-OS it could compete with other tools of MICROSOFT...

I dislike all this enough because I found the project SEDNA an excellent idea from the beginning.
And some people are making an excellent work with the extensions, and they would deserve more respect.

Craig Berntson

The Sedna components are all written in either VFP or VB.net. The core C/C++ code of VFP contains lots of Microsoft's Intellectual Property and will not be released as Open Source nor sold to another company. Think about all that code, some over 20 years old and the number of VFP devs that could understand it or modify it. Very few could.

dni

They are doing something at:

http://www.codeplex.com/Project/ProjectDirectory.aspx ProjectSearchText=vfp

I am sure someone will apear soon with the next vfp version....

Indiana92

This is a bad news, but i have to say that i was waitig for it from some years.

I don't understand Ms choice, but the look at money and the look at .net. Vfoxpro doesn't satisfy none of these option. I don't like .net, i think vfp is better. we have some application and the main one has 900 forms and if i have to rewrite them i'll evaluate my options. Many developers on other forums speak to leave Windows market or ms products. I say that i have to think what to do. I use .net and i use Java and i'll decide in next months. At the moment we continue with foxpro. We have time to take decisions and we'll take them.

Alex Feldstein

Craig Berntson's comment in this thread is entirely correct. Microsoft will not release VFP code as open source because of trade secrets and because it does not make sense to do it. Few people can understand the millions of lines of C/C++ code, some very old by now.

Instead as commented in several forums and blogs, SEDNA will be released on time and the code will be open source and free at Codeplex.

There will be FoxPro apps being written for years to come. There will be community support (forums like this one, newsgroups, blogs and even Fox MVPs for years to come).

This is not unexpected news. The community knew it for more than a year. We just did not know when the official date would be. Nothing has really changed. The Fox lives on.

Aleniko

How about MS unsells Fox software and gets the development team back to Ohio...

AndyKr

Well I doubt that they would. They have invested a lot of money in VFP over the past 15 years and a lot of VFP technologies are used in other Microsoft tools - especially RushMore optimization and, I believe, also parts of the VFP ISAM and its CURSOR engine. So even if MS do not want to develop VFP any further, it is unlikely they would release it to a potential competitor.

As I said elsewhere:

Viewed objectively this is no surprise at all. About the only thing that would make any sense for a new "VFP 10" version would be a complete re-write from the ground up to make it a full 64-bit application. Given the revenue model for VFP (i.e. ZERO!!!), and the fact that Microsoft's preferred strategy is to sell SQL Server Licenses, that would make no financial sense whatsoever, and there really isn't (from Microsoft's perspective) a business case for a desktop database. Remember, Microsoft is NOT a software company, it is a primarily a Marketing company in the business of making money!

And before we start the "Sky is falling" chorus, just consider how many people are still using VFP 6.0 (never mind 7.0 or 8.0) - a version that was released 8 years ago and is no longer even supported. Now add in those who still use FP DOS, and FP 2.6W (products that died 12 years ago) and explain to me why this actually matters

Just because Microsoft say they won't release a Version 10 doesn't mean any of the following:

that VFP is going to stop working
that its data handling and integration capabilities have gone away
that the reasons that you chose VFP as your development tool to begin with have changed
that you can no longer create and distribute royalty free EXE data-based applications
that the capabilities and extensibility that make VFP the most powerful desktop database have changed

I have always tried to use the best tool for the job at hand. I will continue to do so, and as long as the best tool is VFP then that is what I will use!

Pablo Roca

No one at Microsoft replied officially nothing regarding selling VFP, question that I done. Old code Yes, but useful old code.

If the VFP full source is liberated, some C/C++ developers will appear. How many VFP Team developers are used now with that old C/C++ code Three I'll bet you that many more can be found worldwide.

Releasing the VFP code or selling the VFP product is an interest for MS For sure not. The better benefit to MS is leaving VFP to dim.

Why MS releases the Windows XP source code and not the VFP source code Business interests again. Perhaps they fear that a competitor in some scenarios to SQL Server/Access would emerge. Even with that old code that no one is suppossed to manage.

SEDNA VFPx, VFPy .. yes, good initiatives but with an ended product. How a software company can compete with a VFP app when the competirors can say "It's developed with a product with no more core upgrades" .. poorly.

The revenue model for VFP came to zero, cause the VFP Team leads & marketing managers couldn't manage to sell his product inside MS. Bad job was done here. It's a shame the way that MS hidded to VFP under the carpet.

Yes is not surprise seeing how the last years were. In some countries was almost to impossible buy a VFP license, even asking to MS. So no one must be surprised now.

The sky is not falling, the sky is changing ... just that. And us as developers must adapt to the change. Now is a new ocassion to see what is out there, to think in new possibilities, to see the world from a new perspective. Since two days, now I'm considering cross platform products (Win, *nix and Mac OSX) thing I never planned before ... so this can be a good opportunity to see that live is out there.

VFP will still be the best desktop database development environment. People will still develop in a good product like VFP. We will have time for see alternatives to Fox.

But now things are changing ...

CDFAUX

Hi Pablo.

Although I wanted to be as optimistic as Andy, my feelings are similar to yours.
And the biggest problem that I see in this announcement of M$, it is in fact the difficulty to defend VFP in front of the clients. Before it was difficult because the rumors, but now it will be directly impossible.
From now on will be easier to defend a product developed with unknown tools that with "VFP, the dead."
It had been better if M$ has continued with their previous silence.

Saludos!

TheLoon

Ever since M$ bought Foxpro there was a fear they'd rip out the database engine and kill the product. Here we are at version 9 with the Sedna add-on coming down the pipe. I think they gave it a good run.

What I don't see is a clear exit strategy. Is everyone expected to use Access Somehow graft Foxpro queries into their other .NET languages The options seem confusing and awkward.

Craig Berntson

Access is not the answer. It is morphing into some kind of Sharepoint database.

FoxPro type queries are already coming in .Net. Look carefully at LINQ. It does VFP type queries and more.

Also, keep a close watch on the next two or three versions of VB.Net. You'll be very surprised by how much it looks like VFP.

Anonymous

If microsoft are going to desert there long serving user base then I for one will be deserting Microsoft and will look at a non microsoft replacement.

dni

That is a very "healthy" point of view. Microsoft has right to continue or not his product. We, as programmers, will not cry, we must be flexible and work with other software products dbase, xbase, c++, vb...In this way we can be more independent or not (depending what you choose) by software producers...

Microsoft: No Visual FoxPro 10

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