yag: Community and Architecture : CodePlex

How I feel about making the VFP announcement

YAG — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 00:53:00 GMT

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

Mary Jo Foley: "Microsoft to release FoxPro ‘Sedna’ as Shared Source"

YAG — Wed, 14 Mar 2007 04:51:00 GMT

The first article from the announcement today (that I've found) is from Mary Jo Foley:

At the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) Summit in Seattle this week, Microsoft officials shared Shared Source news with the Visual FoxPro faithful and other attendees. The latest: Microsoft plans to release by the end of this summer the Foxpro "Sedna" bits as Shared Source on its CodePlex code-repository site.

Read the rest here

Twenty years and counting...

YAG — Wed, 14 Mar 2007 04:33:00 GMT

I was talking to some of the MVPs today about the VFP announcement that we've made and we started talking about some of the things we've shared over the years. I've been involved with Fox since Foxbase days back in 1986 or so. Many of my best friends come from the community.

I'm not really ready to talk about everything that I'm feeling right now, but I do think that taking major portions of the product and setting it loose in the community via Codeplex just feels right. Foxbase, FoxPro and VFP have always been driven by the needs of the folks that use it (I remember the first feature that I remember directly influencing); and that can continue due to our rich extensibility.

As far as the team goes - we're going to finish the work on SP2 and on Sedna. And that's going to be our focus tomorrow and on thru summer.

Message to the VFP Community

YAG — Wed, 14 Mar 2007 04:13:00 GMT

We just posted the following to the VFP site. I'll write more later:

A Message to the Community

We have been asked about our plans for a new version of VFP. We are announcing today that there will be no VFP 10. VFP9 will continue to be supported according to our existing policy with support through 2015 (http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/?p1=7992). We will be releasing SP2 for Visual FoxPro 9 this summer as planned, providing fixes and additional support for Windows Vista.

Additionally, as you know, we’ve been working on a project codenamed Sedna for the past year or so. Sedna is built using the extensibility model of VFP9 and provides a number of new features including enhanced connectivity to SQL Server, integration with parts of the .NET framework, support for search using Windows Desktop Search and Windows Vista as well as enhanced access to VFP data from Visual Studio.

Concurrently, the community has been using CodePlex (http://www.codeplex.com) to enhance VFP using these same capabilities in the VFPx and VFPy projects. Some of these community driven enhancements include:

Support for GDI+
An enhanced class browser
Support for Windows Desktop Alerts
An object oriented menu system
Integration with MSBuild
A rule-based code analysis tool similar to fxCop in Visual Studio
An Outlook Control Bar control

To reiterate, today we are announcing that we are not planning on releasing a VFP 10 and will be releasing the completed Sedna work on CodePlex at no charge. The components written as part of Sedna will be placed in the community for further enhancement as part of our shared source initiative. You can expect to see the Sedna code on CodePlex sometime before the end of summer 2007.

The VFP team

UPDATE - We're having issues getting the update on our MSDN site. It will be up soon, hopefully.

Codeplex team interviewed on Channel9

YAG — Tue, 24 Oct 2006 04:00:00 GMT

Channel9 interviewed some of the Codeplex team in their centralized work area. People's comments seem favorable. Check out the video!

CodePlex Development Process

YAG — Wed, 12 Jul 2006 02:43:00 GMT

One of the questions I got asked in the interviews I discuss below was whether we used agile methods and how things worked. Brad, from the CodePlex team, has a great post with an introduction to their process.

One sample paragraph:

On the team, our process is very similar to eXtreme Programming (despite Microsoft's current infatuation with Scrum, we are still doing an XP-style planning game). The team has been running one week iterations for more than a year, with our PM George now leading both the iteration planning and stand-up meetings. Now that we have launched the site, we plan for frequent releases of the software (our plans right now are roughly every three weeks, to ensure that we have given each release adequate regression testing and stabilization time).

Check it out!

Interviews online

YAG — Wed, 12 Jul 2006 02:36:00 GMT

I was interviewed by Level Extreme for two of their online magazines: .NET Magazine and Universal Thread Magazine.

In the .NET Magazine interview, we talked about my new position here on the Communities Team, .NET in general, Linq and a number of other things.

In the UT Magazine, we talked about Visual FoxPro, Sedna, and a little about my new gig as well.

It's always fun talking to the guys at Level Extreme. Thanks for getting in touch with me!

SednaX renamed to VFPX and is now on CodePlex

YAG — Tue, 27 Jun 2006 22:29:00 GMT

Just a quick note that VFPX is now on CodePlex. Looks like things are still being moved over - but this is exciting to see...

SednaX and CodePlex

YAG — Tue, 06 Jun 2006 20:20:00 GMT

Well, the news is finally out. SednaX is moving to CodePlex. I'm really excited to have the community helping to not only move VFP forward (as a number of efforts are doing), but also to help us get our new site tested. My thanks to everyone involved.