At 12:26 2015-06-16, Ted Roche <tedroche@gmail.com> wrote:

>On Tue, Jun 16, 2015 at 2:50 PM, Gene Wirchenko <genew@telus.net> wrote:

> >

> > Or maybe, Microsoft should quit cutting us off at the knees.

>

>I really think we agree on this issue, but seem to be using different

>ways to say it.

Quite.

>Microsoft as a vendor does not have my interests nor those of my

>clients at heart. Their means of making money is by forcing me to

>upgrade to products I don't need with features I don't want, and make

>me update software which was meeting my customer's needs, often

>breaking working software. For large and complex line-of-business

>applications, this can be costly to the point of infeasible.

Quite.

>If a vendor so poorly meets my needs, I conclude I need to seek out

>other vendors.

It has gotten about to that point for me. The next time I buy

a system, I am *much* less likely to go Microsoft. I might have to

because of the VFP app I support, but apart from that, I do not have

really strong reasons to stay with them. Data conversion could be an

issue for a few programs, but it might not be after all. There is

the learning curve of a new system, but that is not that much for

someone like me; I am more concerned that a new system can do

everything that I want, not so much how.

> > Your argument could be used to say not to use VFP.

>

>Yes, it could, although I did not advance that point. VFP is a

>delightfully capable product that fits a unique niche. Unfortunately,

>VFP's owner is not interesting in promoting it. Again, if the

>interests of the two parties don't align...

Quite.

>I worked very closely with Microsoft as an MVP, an active beta tester,

>a "partner" in various "Partner Networks" over the years, a speaker at

>their conferences, and an attendee at various NDA functions, in hopes

>of getting them to see that perspective. Overall, I think I helped

>prolong FoxPro's life. While the product had a long run, I've

>concluded I need to diversify the tools I can offer to my clients, for

>their benefit and mine.

Quite possibly, but maybe they did not care enough for your

efforts to be relevant to them. Your efforts were/are appreciated by

many of us.

> >> Commercial and proprietary OSes are going to do what they want to do,

> >> not what necessarily what you want.

> >

> > Do you really think that I do not know this?

>You complained that a 1990's 16-bit utility built to run on DOS won't

>run in the latest 64-bit OS that includes a 32-bit emulator to run

>Windows-on-Windows for 15-year-backward compatibility. The CMD shell

>may look a lot like DOS, but it is not COMMAND.COM. DOS was built with

>a lot of assumptions that it owned the entire machine (all 640k!) and

>could do whatever it wanted, something you can't do in a

>cooperatively-multitasking machine with gigabytes of RAM and 2,4,8 or

>more CPUs/threads. If you want to run DOS, you ought to run DOS,

>either in a VM or an emulator. Windows hasn't run under DOS since

>Windows 98 (okay, WinME, but no one used that), so it's time to run

>DOS differently.

IBM has managed to have long-time compatibility on their

mainframes. Compatibility can be done if one has the will to do

so. Microsoft does not.

>I really think your question above, "2) Microsoft broke 16-bit

>software on 64-bit Windows 7. Why couldn't

>they have just kept the functionality?" has a pretty clear answer: it

>was not in their interests. Maintaining a 16-bit interface means a lot

>of very old and questionable code would need to be brought along and

>re-compiled in a new OS, introducing maintenance costs and security

>liabilities. Turning the question around, "why should they have kept

>the functionality?" I don't see that there was a downside to them to

>drop it.

I think there was a downside for them, but maybe/probably not a

big enough one. Microsoft has, over the years, trained me to expect

to be ill-treated. Now that there are viable alternatives, I need

approximately one more break to kick the Microsoft habit. Once gone,

I will likely be gone for good.

Sincerely,

Gene Wirchenko

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