Tod means Fox

Supporting decisions through sound data management

Archive for category In The News

Microsoft and Open Source

May 15

Posted by Tod McKenna in In The News

As you know, Microsoft and Open Source have had an oil/water type of relationship. Here’s an article that gives us 10 things that MS loves and hates about Open Source. I post this here because FoxPro made the list:

The year-old open source project hosting Web site started by Microsoft lets users share open source development projects. The big news is that portions of Visual FoxPro will be posted as open source on Codeplex. A new version of the Web site is released every three weeks adding additional features and updates. As of early March, there were 1,029 projects on the site.

Tags: , ,

No Comments

Take That, Microsoft!

May 4

Posted by Tod McKenna in In The News

We just picked up 5 new licenses for VFP9, with the more on the way. I am very happy about this decision (it was in management’s hands, certainly not mine). We are in the process of migrating a VFP7 application, which has a few hundred installations around the country, to VFP9. The move was almost squashed thanks to MS’s latest announcement. VFP9 SP1 will make our application run better, give the engineers here more features and tools, open more doors into the XML world, and allow us to bother MS for support a little while longer.

Tags: , ,

1 Comment

FoxPro: A tool for developing countries

May 3

Posted by Tod McKenna in In The News

Wilson Ng, of Wired Desktop has made an interesting observation about VFP. He was reviewing the MasFoxPro site (which is what the meat of his article is about) and noticed that most people who have signed the petition are from ‘developing’ countries. (As a side note: I don’t like the term ‘developing’, but anyway.)

The people who signed come from about 80different countries worldwide. It is especially noticeable that the tool is really popular in developing countries. If you note, there were only 341 programmers from the United States, 90 from Germany and 42 from United Kingdom who signed. In contrast, 479 developers from Russia, 280 from China, 294 from Argentina, 150 from Brazil, 156 from Peru and 109 from Ukraine signed petition.

I’ve always known VFP to have a strong international presence. But where are all the US developers? Where are their signatures?

Tags: ,

No Comments

…and in this corner…

Apr 26

Posted by Tod McKenna in In The News

Ladies and gentlemen! Boys and girls! Step right up and watch the debate unfold. (Did you do the voice?)Most in the Fox community are frazzled by the grim reality of no more FoxPro releases. The folks at MasFoxPro are still trying to change Microsoft’s mind though, and I support them. Besides, if this works, I’ll hire them to get my 18 month old son to eat a little something more than just cookies and oatmeal (which he learned by watching me, of course).

Perhaps the best representation of the internal debate (and maybe a little in-fighting) is happening over at fox.wikis. Doug Hennig says that he will “move on and make the best of our situation”. While everyone is being forced to move on (at least to some degree, after all, VFP is a very mature language and will continue to be a valuable asset), some are slamming the door (and re-opening the door only to slam it again) while others are softly closing it.

Tags: ,

No Comments

Milind Lele’s April 2007 – Letter from the Editor

Apr 25

Posted by Tod McKenna in In The News

Foxfolk, Milind Lele’s letter is posted at Microsoft.com. What I like about this letter is how he framed the decision to stop further development of VFP. Instead of Soma Somasegar’s comment about it being “hard to hear that you have to go and learn something else” (see my last entry), he focuses on addressing some of the concerns that VFP programmers are having about the announcement.

Here’s a taste:

Visual FoxPro core/engine is very stable. It has been so for a very long time. In fact, many have written to me asking, why this decision given such stability/maturity? One significant aspect to consider is this: Most of the feature enhancement requests we have received in recent years is XBase components. Thus making these components open source enables the community to drive improvements and enhancements and yet leverage a stable engine.

Tags: ,

No Comments

Stubborn Foxers labeled unwilling to learn

Apr 23

Posted by Tod McKenna in In The News

From the article “Microsoft Working to Broaden Reach of Its Development Tools“, over at Computerworld Development, Soma Somasegar, corporate vice president of the developer unit, spoke with Computerworld last week. Apparently Visual FoxPro developers are idiots who don’t want to go out and learn new things. While reality shows that Visual FoxPro developers are incredibly versatile, willing to adapt and learn new technologies, and quite capable of doing so. This guy Soma is insulting the Fox community, in my opinion. This is what he had to say:

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.

As if we’re being stubborn because we don’t want to learn. We’re being stubborn because Visual FoxPro is an awesome tool and many of us have built a career around it. We are stubborn because it will be even more difficult to sell a project in VFP. Soma needs a reality check.

Tags: ,

No Comments

We’re a cultish group, aren’t we?

Apr 17

Posted by Tod McKenna in In The News

Here is yet another article (a very well written and informative one, I might add) about MS’s latest announcement: Good News, Bad News for Visual FoxPro Developers by Stuart J. Johnston

Here’s a taste:

What makes VFP unique is that it closely binds a data-centric language with a local database engine, unlike any other developer tool,” says Ken Levy, a former VFP product manager. Because it was not directed towards the same markets as Access and Microsoft Office, the VFP product group was pretty much left to its own devices.

…

Through the years, FoxPro evolved into VFP, becoming another of the company’s “Visual” products, replete with integration into Visual Studio. But it was always somehow out of the mainstream. To some extent, that helped VFP establish a following that verges on cultish.

Tags:

No Comments