Submitted by Microsoft has announced that it will not be releasing any new versions of its Visual FoxPro development software past Version 9.0, but the company will continue to support the technology through 2015. Instead of releasing new versions of FoxPro, Microsoft will release core portions of the FoxPro software to its CodePlex community development site, said Alan Griver, a group manager within the Microsoft Visual Studio team, which leads the FoxPro team.
I’m impressed!
It is a brilliant strategic move on Microsoft’s behalf. By open sourcing a product they don’t want to continue spending resources developing themselves and providing support for the OS version, they’re effectively stopping users from going to other companies for alternatives – who knows, they could end up using alternative MS Office too!
But this way, they keep the community partially happy, save their customers, and pimp CodePlex some more!
Color me unimpressed.
I’ll be impressed when they Open Source something they care about.
Not an old boat anchor like FoxPro.
Maybe they’ll Open Source “Bob” once it starts to lose popularity.
Edited 2007-03-14 18:25
I’ll be impressed when they Open Source something they care about.
Maybe they’ll Open Source “Bob” once it starts to lose popularity.
ROTFL.
You’re so easily amused…
“Oooooooohhhhh … pret-ty lights…”
Drivel.
But not a surprising source for such drivel.
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But not a surprising source for such drivel.
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I think we’ve found our grand prize winner for understatement of the decade.
Tomcat is a veritable fount of it.
But don’t be too vigilent. He never listens to what other people say, and it’ll get you a nasty case of carpel tunnel if you try to counter *all* the tripe. 😉
Notice how he’s started modding all my posts down now in a desperate attempt to fake credibility?
You’re in good company. I’ve picked up an “admirer” too.
Pretty much anything I have posted on any topic the last couple of days has gotten bumped down by someone. Even the ones that aren’t about Gentoo ;-P
They get bumped back up again later, for the most part.
I guess whoever it is thinks that I care. I suppose I should feel flattered.
Always a pleasure reading your posts!
Maybe they’ll Open Source “Bob” once it starts to lose popularity
Then we can port it to OSX and finally have our “Bob for Apples”
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Then we can port it to OSX and finally have our “Bob for Apples”
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That… is… just… sooooooooo bad! 😉
-Steve
Clue phone for you: MS is a business, and they wouldn’t remain profitable if they gave away source code for products which people currently pay for. And, before pull examples such as Red Hat and Novell out of your rear, those companies don’t give away all their source code.
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Clue phone for you:
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And, before pull examples such as Red Hat and Novell out of your rear, those companies don’t give away all their source code.
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RedHat does, very scrupulously. Novell does not.
Maybe you should have kept your clue phone. 😉
Edited 2007-03-14 19:01
Clue phone for you: MS is a business, and they wouldn’t remain profitable if they gave away source code for products which people currently pay for.
Clue phone for you: You wouldn’t pay extra to get your car-hood unbolted. People DO pay for open source software.
What kind of nurk do you have to be not to understand that in 2007?
Clue phone for you: You wouldn’t pay extra to get your car-hood unbolted. People DO pay for open source software.
Do they? Or are they paying for the hardware and/or services/support that goes along with it? Microsoft, unlike Redhat (in this context anyway) is in the software industry, not the services industry. And when you make money on selling software (not hardware or support), it’s kind of hard to do that when you’re giving it away.
Edited 2007-03-14 21:31
Do they? Or are they paying for the hardware and/or services/support that goes along with it?
Yes, they do. What about when they get the software unbundled from hardware.
Do they? Or are they paying for the hardware and/or services/support that goes along with it? Microsoft, unlike Redhat (in this context anyway) is in the software industry, not the services industry. And when you make money on selling software (not hardware or support), it’s kind of hard to do that when you’re giving it away.
I’m not even going to bother trying to address that. If you didn’t get memo on the meaning of free software by now, I don’t have the expert medical skills you need.
Yes, they do. What about when they get the software unbundled from hardware.
And unbundled from support. Who’s buying open source software in this capacity, other than people doing it for goodwill? Unless you’re having some kind of software custom written, in which case you’re probably going to pay out the ass for it …
I’m not even going to bother trying to address that. If you didn’t get memo on the meaning of free software by now, I don’t have the expert medical skills you need.
Oh, I know what it means to advocates of free software, but what does it mean to a company selling software in a non service-oriented enviroment? If you don’t have something other than the software itself to sell, then what are the benefits of open sourcing your code so that it’s freely available to everyone? Sure, you’ve made a contribution to society, but at the cost of going out of business?
And unbundled from support. Who’s buying open source software in this capacity, other than people doing it for goodwill? Unless you’re having some kind of software custom written, in which case you’re probably going to pay out the ass for it …
Does money that is given in goodwill have less value than money is extracted by the like-pulling-teeth method? Probably not – in fact it may have MORE value, since if people are HAVING to pay someone to do something against their will, they will be less happy about it than if they WANTED to pay them, and as we all know, bad news travels faster than good.
Oh, I know what it means to advocates of free software, but what does it mean to a company selling software in a non service-oriented enviroment? If you don’t have something other than the software itself to sell, then what are the benefits of open sourcing your code so that it’s freely available to everyone? Sure, you’ve made a contribution to society, but at the cost of going out of business?
Sounds like you’re advocating the selling of software without the “pain” of having to do support. Whoever would buy unsupported software is a plonker.
And I’m no longer going to let people who imply that proprietary software is a guaranteed way to make money (and therefore is unlike open source) get away with it any longer: neither is, otherwise OS/2 would still be thriving (to name one product).
If your single reason for developing proprietary software is to lock customers in and “guarantee” yourself a profit that way, then you’ll have to forgive me for not buying from you on the basis that I suspect you’re developing proprietary software so that you can lock your customers in without having to develop GOOD software.
Does money that is given in goodwill have less value than money is extracted by the like-pulling-teeth method?
Certainly not, but it’s a little hard to run a business around a model where your customers don’t have to pay you if they don’t want to. Like it or not, most people are tuned into the station ‘WII FM’, or “What’s in it for me?” How many people do you think will pay you out of the kindness of their hearts? Answer: Not many.
Sounds like you’re advocating the selling of software without the “pain” of having to do support. Whoever would buy unsupported software is a plonker.
Of course, every software that is sold should come with support. But if you flip the script and say that you are going to give away the software and sell the support (instead of selling the software and giving away support), then you have just proven my point …
And I’m no longer going to let people who imply that proprietary software is a guaranteed way to make money (and therefore is unlike open source) get away with it any longer: neither is, otherwise OS/2 would still be thriving (to name one product).
I’m not saying that at all. What I am saying is that, as far as I have been able to determine, you can’t make money selling open source software.
If your single reason for developing proprietary software is to lock customers in and “guarantee” yourself a profit that way, then you’ll have to forgive me for not buying from you on the basis that I suspect you’re developing proprietary software so that you can lock your customers in without having to develop GOOD software.
The only way you’re going to lock people in is if you’re using non-standard file formats, a practice of which I am personally not a big supporter. I tend not to use programs where I can’t export my data and get at it some other way. However, there are many proprietary apps that work around non-proprietary file formats.
The point is that if I want to write COTS (commercial over the shelf software) and actually make money doing it, assuming I don’t have hardware or services to fall back on, I have not seen any other way to do that. If you know of some alternative method where I can give away my software and still get paid for it, I’m all ears. Let’s use Adobe for example: I’d love to see a senario where they can open source Photoshop, Dreamweaver, and the rest of their products tomorrow, and still stand a snowball’s chance in hell to profit off of them.
The point is that if I want to write COTS (commercial over the shelf software) and actually make money doing it, assuming I don’t have hardware or services to fall back on, I have not seen any other way to do that. If you know of some alternative method where I can give away my software and still get paid for it, I’m all ears. Let’s use Adobe for example: I’d love to see a senario where they can open source Photoshop, Dreamweaver, and the rest of their products tomorrow, and still stand a snowball’s chance in hell to profit off of them.
Redhat seem to be doing ok GPL’ing everything…
The only way you’re going to lock people in is if you’re using non-standard file formats, a practice of which I am personally not a big supporter. I tend not to use programs where I can’t export my data and get at it some other way. However, there are many proprietary apps that work around non-proprietary file formats.
I would agree that sticking to standard file formats would alleviate [perhaps not eliminate] the need for open source. The problem is, one of the reasons why proprietary software seems to be so popular is precisely *because* it allows you to use non-standard file formats (.doc is only standard because so many people use MSOffice – it could be changed by MS tomorrow and everyone else would be playing catchup) and/or dick around with supposedly standard ones.
Edited 2007-03-15 01:40
The point is that if I want to write COTS (commercial over the shelf software) and actually make money doing it, assuming I don’t have hardware or services to fall back on, I have not seen any other way to do that. If you know of some alternative method where I can give away my software and still get paid for it, I’m all ears. Let’s use Adobe for example: I’d love to see a senario where they can open source Photoshop, Dreamweaver, and the rest of their products tomorrow, and still stand a snowball’s chance in hell to profit off of them.
Redhat seem to be doing ok GPL’ing everything…
Right, but they’re making money selling services, not software. And that is a perfectly viable business model as I previously pointed out, assuming that you have the services part to fall back on. But if you don’t, how are you going to stay in business GPL’ing your software?
I would agree that sticking to standard file formats would alleviate [perhaps not eliminate] the need for open source. The problem is, one of the reasons why proprietary software seems to be so popular is precisely *because* it allows you to use non-standard file formats
Yes, that’s true in some cases, but take apps like Dreamweaver, which works with standard HTML/scripting stuff. And Adobe Audition, which basically works on any audio files you throw at it. And Newzleecher (kickass binary usenet downloader) works with normal .nzb files. Opera reads HTML. Ultraedit (which a lot of people are clamoring for a Linux version) reads text files, etc … etc …
Set your clue phone on vibrate, keeps going off and annoying the other readers.
@tomcat: Clue phone rang-back for you — Microsoft does not give away software on the same scale as Novell or Red Hat. Further, both of those other vendors (and many others like them) give away very large portions of their software catalog for which people are still paying good dollars for. Moreso, “give away” has a completely different meaning to Microsoft than it does to those other vendors.
So your point is based on a fallacy and the “clue phone” bit was really uncalled for, IMO.
Try again?
The point isn’t whether Microsoft released the code to something that Microsoft cares about, it’s whether they released the code to something that the corresponding community cares about. I don’t care about FoxPro, but it has a community following, whose members will be pleased to see code released to CodePlex.
Very well said. This is what people miss when they look at Microsoft. Oh Microsoft doesn’t want to develop FoxPro so they are dumping it on OSS community.
Helloooo… as i said in my other post, the biggest complain to commercial software that people make is once the company runs out of business or abandon a product, the software is dead and customers are screwed.
Well this is changing. Microsoft’s step is a strategic move and builds customer confidence. If Microsoft gives customer assurance that if they abandon a software, they will release it’s source under open source, i believe this gives customer more confidence in the product.
Anyone from Compuware reading this? Can you guys open source Softice now that you have abandoned it?
Bob won’t be opensourced until we stop laughing of it
Try not to forget that although many have forgotten Foxpro on the desktop, many old enterprise applications are written on Foxpro, and this COULD be very good news for some larger companies where a quick – and frankly, pointless – migration off of a platform that has been working for over a decade is unlikely.
I think all efforts to open source software should be applauded.
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I think all efforts to open source software should be applauded.
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Adam,
I actually agree with you on that, despite my initial dismissive tone. (Microsoft is such an easy target, after all.)
This move is probably significant to quite a number of people.
It will be interesting to see how *well* this is handled. Are they going to just dump a load of code? Or are they going to try to cultivate a real community?
I vote that OSNews keep a close eye on this project and how it is handled. It could offer some rare insights.
-Steve
Edited 2007-03-14 21:10
Maybe they’ll Open Source “Bob” once it starts to lose popularity.
I am surprised the OSS camp hasn’t copied that one yet. After all, MS haters sure are addicted to that product.
You could even have the little dog type terminal commands… lol
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I am surprised the OSS camp hasn’t copied that one yet. After all, MS haters sure are addicted to that product.
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I was only joking. But… I wonder what would happen if they did release it as OSS?
It’d be one hell of a joke on them if we ran with it and it was successful! 😉
Bob Linux?
Current Linux distros are de-emphasizing the terminal.
But I *could* see the little dog peeing on a Windows logo during the installation process.
This is much better than not releasing the source code at all when the product is abandoned.
One of the strongest argument about open source is that once it is out there, it will never just disappear.
If Microsoft is setting example for commercial software to open source their code if they are abandoning it then it is IMHO a good thing.
If Compuware takes a clue from this and open source SoftIce, that would be so cool.
.. and then perhaps the much worshipped IBM, can follow suit, and release the source code for OS/2 under a similar arrangement.
I never thought I’d see a flocktard complaining about Microsoft releasing something. Brilliant.
I’d like to see some of their older development stuff open sourced.
Visual Basic 6.0
Visual C++ 6.0
Heck all of visual studio 6 would rock.
I think open-sourcing VB6 would be great!! So many developers felt abandoned by Microsoft when the dropped VB6, this would give them some hope. I like VB6, so shoot me!
Yet Access is allowed to live, go figure. This pretty much confirms for me what a lot of us thought all along, the only reason they bought it was of costing less to kill a better competitor than having to go to all the trouble of producing a better competitive product. More MS innovation, yeah!
“Yet Access is allowed to live, go figure.”
Access won’t be alive for too much longer…think SQL Express/SQL Compact (both of which are currently free as in beernuts). They are on track to be folded into an Access like package in a future release.
I also hate to tell you this, but for the 99% of business users that aren’t developers, Access is a huge productivity boon. Departmental level apps that don’t have and IT budget are perfectly suited for Access.
Access won’t be alive for too much longer…think SQL Express/SQL Compact (both of which are currently free as in beernuts). They are on track to be folded into an Access like package in a future release.
What’s the diff (no, really, I’m asking because I want to know) between Access and SQL/Express? Especially if and when it’s “folded into an Access-like pakage”?
From a technical standpoint, Access is based on the JET data engine, whereas SQL Express/SQL Compact is a full on ODBC/OLEDB conforming DB engine, and is almost identical to the core engine used in the full SQL Server RDBMS’s.
From an end user standpoint, the SQL Express package will definitely have a GUI frontend similar to what Access has now, but with the backing of a more robust data store, lots of the common Access issues (data corruption, etc) will simply go away.
From a developer standpoint, 3 words: no more Access. As it is now, you can build databases using SQL Express/Compact engines and deploy them with your application w/o any special licensing provisions…it’s free to distribute the SQL runtime with minimal end user restrictions. No more MDAC hell, no more JET version hell. The database files are the same format as full SQL Server versions, so if your app needs to be upgraded to a higher level SQL solution, you can attach the mdf file with no problems.
Perhaps most importantly, this will be the beginning of the end for JET. Fingers are crossed at least.
Thanks.
I was naive enough about Access not know about JET. I thought it was SQL based.
Reminded me of one day when I was WAN manager for, “The Money Store”, a US mortgage mill when the manager of a store in Florida developed something handy with it, decided to share with a few other store managers and instantly turned the, (actual official name), “Million Dollar An Hour Network”, into a two cent abyss. Good times.
Microsoft bought Fox Technologies in 1992, have developed and maintained FoxPro up till now, and will continue to support it through 2015. That’s 15 years of development/support plus 8 more years of support. That’s what you call “buying a competitor to kill it”?
Sure, they bought Fox Tech because it was cheaper to do that than to develop their own. So what? Microsoft saved money and Fox Tech benefitted. But it wasn’t bought to be killed by any stretch of the imagination.
As for your “More MS innovation, yeah!” nonsense, companies like Apple and Google, regarded as the fountains of all innovation, bought much of their tech as well (GarageBand, NeXT, Final Cut’s predecessor, Writely, YouTube, etc).
Edited 2007-03-14 19:18
Just because Apple and Google aren’t innovators, doesn’t mean MS is.
Certainly idn’t hear it from me, always thought Google was just a WAIS ripoff.
That’s what you call “buying a competitor to kill it”?
Well said. The problem is that folk tend to churn out the same tired crap from the list they keep next to their box of tissues, whenever they read the word ‘Microsoft’ in a message.
Foxpro was one of the first ‘IDE’ environments I used, and for the time, it was a joy to use. And contrary to popular belief, it got better when MS took it over. They improved the language, and released a versions for other platforms; not hard to do when you consider that the IDE was actually written in Foxpro; all they had to do was rebuild the runtime for Windows, the Mac and Unix, and the IDE came with it.
Blimey! I just realised that Foxpro was the first cross platform Virtual Machine I ever programmed on! … 😀
Great stuff.
Haven’t touched it in years, and very sad to see it go. But on the other hand, MS putting it in the hands of the community is a good move; and a surprising one.
This pretty much confirms for me what a lot of us thought all along, the only reason they bought it was of costing less to kill a better competitor than having to go to all the trouble of producing a better competitive product. More MS innovation, yeah!
Sure because a buying a company in 1992, updating the product into 2007 and offering support until 2015 is obviously the quick route to killing the competition!
Edited 2007-03-14 21:19
You guys must be talking about some other product I thought they bought because they couldn’t compete with then cannibalized turned into a server and put the rest into a client that neither were as good as the original product that they let languish hardly marketing with no place in their office package then killed?
Edited 2007-03-15 13:47
Well obviously, you thought wrong.
Rather than ‘killing’ it, Foxpro continued to develop and improve.
http://www.foxprohistory.org/foxprotimeline.htm
And now, they release it to the community while stating they’re going to support it for some time.
Before complaining about it, perhaps you should take a look at the huge dungpile of abandoned projects littering sourceforge?
Unless my english fails me
will release core portions != And now, they release it to the community
“We believe that by working with the community to continue to allow the FoxPro technology to be enhanced, that will help” developers who currently have projects written in FoxPro, Griver said.
Glad you feel the love, the only support besides their tech support I read about in that article is in migration to .NET by releasing, “core portions”, that will interface to it.
Access’s days are numbered, I think. SQL server 2005 is wicked compared to previous versions, and it has full integration with the .NET framework. I think MS’s longterm strategy is to standardize all DB products on SQL Server. That’s why they give away SQL Server Express, hoping that having such a capable free product (compared to Access) will move people and apps over to it.
My father in law who started using old DOS based programs like Clipper was really good with FoxPro. If the database was setup correctly, it was really fast, even with hundreds of thousands of records. What was really neat about it was you could make executable applications from it and host them on a server. But, they could not charge for a client/server model like the do for Sequel Server. So they kind of let it die a slow death.
Actually, SQL server pricing is based on client connections, OR CPU’s. So you can choose how you want to pay for it.
I remember way back when MS bought Foxpro, and I think the main reason for buying was to integrate the Foxpro query engine into Access. The Foxpro engine was much faster, and I think it got put into Access 2.0.
What I would love to see is the company that currently owns the Paradox db system opensource it. It was just as good as Access, and ObjectPal was pretty solid. They are both good systems for writing department level apps.
The Rushmore technology is what Microsoft was after when they bought FoxPro. There was a way to determine whether your query was using Jet or Rushmore, but I think you had to change a registry setting before you could tell which one was being used.
FoxPro developers are a rare bunch…there is a reason why MS has kept FoxPro development going on for as long as they have (aside from the fact that while a bit esoteric, FoxPro is actually one of the best development environments for what it does…good ol’ fashioned client/server database application development. It’s also been fully OO for a long time now).
The FoxPro developers that I know would put even the most ravenous of *nix zealots to shame (and I mean that in a very charming way)…not only do they believe they use the best programming language ever made, they’ll fight you tooth and nail as to why (and will usually win…there is no such thing as an average FoxPro developer to my knowledge…most of them have a gazillion years of experience developing FoxPro apps). They are as passionate about their language as they are about their work, and every time MS threatened to stop further FoxPro development an extremely vocal group always got them to reconsider.
I assume that MS open sourcing it is their version of an olive branch to appease the FoxPro crowd. Knowing those guys, this will be plenty good enough.
FoxPro apps may not be much to look at (both source code and GUI-wise), but they’ll blow the doors off other comparable client/server apps in the performance/time to implementation department.
You can view the interesting early history of FoxPro at this site: http://www.foxprohistory.org
Incidentally professor Fulton became fabulously wealthy as a result of the FoxPro acquisition.
Why don’t they open source their long gone systems like Windows 1-3.1, 9x and MS-DOS stuff? There are lots of legacy programs that are hard to run and some projects which could benefit from this (like FreeDOS or Dosbox which contains it’s own high level DOS API implementation), heck those often don’t even run on XP.
But again, this is MS, and huge chunk of open source software is their direct competition (though much OSS software is also running on Windows), so they don’t want to send a huge message out that open sourcing is a normal thing after your product lifecycle ends (but with this maybe still want to try how this model works).
Edited 2007-03-15 23:23