19 March 2007

FoxPro Going to CodePlex

I just saw that Microsoft is moving FoxPro to the CodePlex site. In other words, as the company has made a decision not to move FoxPro beyond the 9.0 version it will enable the dev community that is passionate about the technology to continue to work on it in a collaborative environment. I think this is very cool for many reasons. Technology progresses, and as some technologies meet the natural end of their lifespan in terms of market opportunity (from the vendor perspective), that does not mean that it is the end of the lifecycle for those that use it. I was deeply involved in the Y2K issue and saw the reality of this issue.

I don't have much time to comment on this, but just thought it was worth calling it out.

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# James Governor’s Monkchips » links for 2007-03-19 said:

PingBack from http://www.redmonk.com/jgovernor/2007/03/19/links-for-2007-03-19/

19 March 07 at 7:31 PM
# Wesley Parish said:

You might consider that what Microsoft is doing is acting like a responsible citizen of the Open Source community of companies at this point in time:

http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/homesteading/homesteading/ar01s04.html

"The second way is to have ownership of the project handed to you by the previous owner (this is sometimes known as `passing the baton'). It is well understood in the community that project owners have a duty to pass projects to competent successors when they are no longer willing or able to invest needed time in development or maintenance work."

All I can add to that is, it's about time Microsoft actually started behaving in such a way - but FoxPro's not the only software product where such behaviour would have dividends.  I have suggested previously that Microsoft do a similar thing with passing on its previous consumer and business OS, programming toolkits and office software source code to developing/undeveloped nations' universities, so that when their hand-me-down computers fall over, they can do something about it.  and that Microsoft has finished with the OSes concerned is irrelevant - the hand-me-down computers they get given, can't exactly run the most modern OSes.  So by _not_ doing this, you're handing the developing markets lock-stock-and-barrel to the non-Microsoft companies.

Well, if it's what you want!!!

19 March 07 at 11:52 PM
# Kevin Salisbury said:

Excellent! It *IS* about time Microsoft did something like this. The VFP community is still a very active and large global development community. For too long they've feared that Microsoft was going to kill the platform completely and force developers to Access or SQL Server. VFP was an excellent choice for CodePlex, and I hope the project grows and eventually encourages Microsoft to thy this on other large projects...

20 March 07 at 12:20 PM
# Mike Dolan said:

What license will it be under?

23 March 07 at 1:40 PM
# anonymous said:

Perhaps Visual Basic 6.0 (classic) will be next?

30 March 07 at 4:10 PM
# Mike said:

Uhhh, no. According to the article Microsoft isn't mowing FoxPro to CodePlex.

But then, anyone with ability to click a link can see this...

(for the less gifted: "core portions" doesn't mean "the whole product", even that MS now provably considers it an "EOL product")

11 April 07 at 9:37 PM
# Only Human | Devoted to technology v.2.0 said:

Wychodzi z tego, że Visual Fox Pro zostanie oddane społeczności Open Source. Nie jestem w stanie na 100%

17 December 07 at 6:20 PM

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