![]() ![]() And growing in popularity at the time was PowerBuilder as the king of client/server tools, with Sybase releasing PowerBuilder 12 last year ironically based on the free Visual Studio Shell runtime. Borland had purchased Aston-Tate’s which included dBase III and IV, and had Paradox. ![]() ![]() The purchase of Fox Software for $173 million in 1992 was very strategic for Microsoft, and was the biggest corporate purchase Microsoft had ever made up until that time. More recently, Ken Levy wrote the following in his blog: They had the marketing resources to put behind FoxPro, and Fox had some interesting and useful technology - not to mention some very talented people, the kind Microsoft likes. They knew that the X-Base language commanded a huge segment of the market and that a product which used the X-Base language would get them into the DBMS market in a big way. Some of the marketing types at MS realized that FoxPro was the best version of X-Base out there, and had been trying to talk Bill Gates into doing something about it. They had no DBMS, and their partnership with Ashton-Tate failed to get Microsoft SQL Server off the ground. It had to have been embarrassing for Microsoft to have such a glaring hole in its product lineup. Microsoft was working on its Access DBMS which uses a modern variant of the BASIC language. I will quote an article Jordan Powell wrote in FoxTalk when Access 1.0 and FoxPro 2.5 were about to ship: Why not? To answer that, I think you have to look at why Microsoft bought Fox Software in the first place. MS would build upon the technology and form an entire “strategy” around it. What does that mean? To my mind, a strategic product is one that Microsoft would invest in heavily and recommend as the primary path for their customers. Microsoft has stated for some time that FoxPro was not a strategic product for them. Statements here may be “obvious” or “old news”, but I think it is helpful to pull it all together.Įnough disclaimers, let’s get to the subject at hand. I am just trying to understand why they would make a business decision to discontinue FoxPro. Now, I am in no way defending Microsoft or saying I agree with their decision. It may also be helpful in deciding where you want to go in the future. I still use VFP as my primary tool, but this has helped me “get over” Microsoft’s decision. To move forward, you have to let go of the past, and this has helped me do that. But I think enough time has passed now and it could be a good thing. Over the past couple of years, I have debated whether or not to write this, because it is a negative subject and obvious flame-bait. I am just putting all the pieces I have on the table and building a picture. Note that this blog entry is just more conjecture/opinion. Ultimately, it comes down to the fact that VFP was not a “strategic product” for Microsoft, but why was that and what does it mean? Answers lead to more questions, but I think that is worth exploring. That led to comments like “writing on the wall”, “head in the sand” and conjecture on lack of sales vs. Regardless, we didn’t get an official statement from Microsoft, other than it was happening, and the Fox community was left to piece together the reasons. YAG may have been constrained in what he could/should say in his position, and I imagine there was some disagreement with the decision within the Fox Team, but those are just guesses. However, at the time, I wished Microsoft would have been more transparent and given a more thorough explanation of their reasons for making that decision. With that in mind, I think it’s good to look at Microsoft’s treatment of VFP and how their decision processes work in regard to development tools.Ĭan you believe it has been over four years since Microsoft posted A Message to the Community and announced that Microsoft would cease development on Visual FoxPro? It has been over three years since Microsoft released VFP9 SP2 and Sedna, and over six years since VFP 9.0 was released! While I was saddened that Microsoft chose to cancel VFP, I appreciated the sensitivity the Fox Team, particularly YAG, showed to the Fox community. Since then, Microsoft has put a lot of emphasis on HTML5 and introduced Windows 8 and the Metro UI, leaving a lot of existing MS developers wondering about the future of their previous technology choices. About six months ago, I wrote most of this article, then decided not to post it. For a while now, I have debated whether or not to post this entry. ![]()
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