The Eschatology of Visual FoxPro

So Alan made it official at the MVP Summit this week - no VFP 10 and no more Fox Team.

It shouldn't surprise anyone. I can't speak for YAG, Ken, Stew, or the others, but Randy and I have been pretty open about this for the last few years and those who have kept there eyes wide open since 2004 or so could see this coming.

In fact, the transition of the Fox Team to other endeavors started a few years back. Team meetings had begun to peter out even before I left in July 2005. As it were, we were under pretty stringent time and resource constraints just to get 9 out the door.

That was a small part of my decision to leave MS and I think it's what prompted Randy Brown's retirement.

Once VFP 9 was released, the Team went into a sort-of caretaker mode with Ken enlisting some community members to support Sedna.

It's each customers own decision how much or how little they continue to develop and support VFP applications. But there is a robust and experienced VFP community that will always be supportive and informative so this announcement shouldn't be a death sentence.

Rather, I agree with YAG that this will be a good thing in the medium to long term as the former Fox Team developers are tasked with taking great features and ideas from VFP and getting them into VS with the help of some very astute PMs. LINQ is a prime example.

And, anyone who keeps up with the online world knows how active Calvin Hsia and Aleksey Tsingauz have been in blogs and support forums, respectively. I don't see that changing.

My question is, will there continue to be support and naming of VFP MVPs? I hope so, especially as Sedna goes open source with the Sedna bits.

The Return of Fox Forward

The FoxForward conference, which premiered last September, is returning for September of this year. I'd encourage all VFP aficionados to attend as some very interesting presentations are in store.

For more information, see this link