I said earlier that I wasn't really ready to talk about how I feel about the announcement. I did, however, post something on the Universal Thread last week in response to a question that a few folks have told me I should post here. Interestingly enough, since I know so many people on the UT personally, though it was hard, I felt more comfortable writing it there.

That said, I understand that there's a group of people here who are not on the UT - and like I said, enough friends and people I trust have told me that I should do this, that here you go. As one long time VFP developer said - this will show people that MSFT is made up of people who have feelings also. That may actually make a good post in itself for one day.

Anyway, this is what I posted in response to how I felt being the one to make the announcement (and read the hundreds of messages, take the phone calls, etc.). Also, please note that I wrote this while in one of the MVP presentations last week during the summit.

 yag

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Good and bad. Like everything else, I guess.

I was one of the first people to bring VFP into corporations and write books about it and publish dev standards. Incredibly blessed to be part of this community - met most of my best friends here, got to work with Ken and Paul on VFP3 as vendors, got to work with the team the past few years.

I feel very proud of how hard everyone has worked on the product. I feel proud of how even newcomers like Milind got into the community (favorite quote "when I don't have the monthly letter up on time, I get emails asking if my back went out again. They are amazing").

I'm amazed at what the community has done to work with us on the product. Localization, helping each other, Codeplex stuff, etc. I'm happy that this will continue.

I'm sad that this moment has come, but I'm glad that I was here to make sure it was handled as well as it could be. I'm proud that there was never a question that we would openly stand up and share the decision when it was final and participate in these conversations. I'm glad that I could tell the MVPs in person. I'm glad that I could spend the time to read well over 500 messages and counting (between here, other forums, newsgroups, my email).

I am humbled by the reaction of some of my friends from over the years (ex-Flashers, folks I haven't talked to for years) who immediately asked me "are you ok?" (and now I'm starting to tear up). I'm amazed at the number of folks on the VB.NET team and their community who've asked me the same thing. I also was humbled that when I offered to not do the keynote in Prague, in favor of someone who is leading the VFPX project, Igor wouldn't hear of it. He made me feel welcome at a time that I was worred what the reaction would be. Till then I thought that I could lose many of my friends because I made the decision to be the one to announce this. (tears are coming down now - and I'm hoping none of the MVPs around me notice).

I've been surprised that I have only gotten a few messages along the lines of "I wonder how you can sleep at night, knowing the thousands of devs who are losing their jobs this week". I've been happy that when I responded to these, talking about the decision, Codeplex, pointing to blog entries, etc., that I've always gotten apologies from the people within a few emails.

So in short, like Doug Dodge would say, I feel blessed.

yag