How Safe if VFP Advanced

[Arthur Lewis]

I came across this video which makes mention of the VFP guru Craig Boyd. Has anyone of you checked it out.
I have not installed it and am doing some due diligence.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQqoLBOCTrI

 

[ggreen61]

All interesting history on Fox. If I remember right, I had read (possibly PC Magazine) that when Borland bought Ashton-Tate, Borland then dropped the Ashton-Tate's lawsuit against Fox Software. Borland at the time was being sued by Lotus over Quattro Pro infringing on 1-2-3's macro language. Borland was arguing in court that the macro language was not copyrightable (which is what Fox was arguing in its case over the x-base language syntax). So when the case against Fox was dropped, Microsoft then moved to acquire Fox Software.

Borland did have several outstanding products - Sidekick, Turbo Pascal and Turbo C (as well as Quattro Pro). When they purchased Ashton-Tate (which only had a dying product line) and then purchased WordPerfect (also a dying product), it lead to their demise as well. Which was a loss to the community.

In many ways, I could wish that Fox Software refused the buyout offer. FoxPro at the time was already on Linux and Macintosh as a product. It would only have gotten better over the years and most likely been a serious contender today. I would have expected that Fox Software would have come out with a server product that was integrated with the FoxPro UI.

Microsoft did move FoxPro forward with Visual FoxPro making it object oriented and event driven. FoxPro was just not the money maker that Microsoft wanted and having acquired it, Microsoft kept it from being a competitor to Access or MSSQL server.

 

[Gerrit Broekhuis]

Hi,

The last great product (maybe the best) from Ashton Tate was FrameWork IV. It was probably too much ahead of it’s time, with word processing, spreadsheet, database and communication software. It’s a pity that never made a Windows version. That could have been a huge competitor for MS Office. I remember programming lots of thing in FRED (FrameWork Editor). I even used the communication module for connecting to BBS providers.

Those were the days…

Regards, Gerrit

 

[fitedgar]

I just purchased “FoxTales: Behind the Scenes at Fox Software” by Kerry Nietz from Amazon, based from this thread.
What an entertainment and insightful book to read.
I wonder what are those "originals" developers are doing now.


Edgar
Integrated Bar Code Systems, Inc.

 

[Mike Lewis]

I wonder what are those "originals" developers are doing now.

I don't know about any of the others, but according to this Wikipedia article, Dave Fulton is now devoting his time to his violin collection. He has become something of an expert on violins, and has made a number of documentary films on the subject.

When Fox sold out to Microsoft, Fulton moved to Seattle and took up a senior position with Microsoft. I recall reading at the time something about him becoming interested in the Antarctic - he was either travelling there or writing about it, or possibly both - but I don't remember any otherthe details.

Mike

__________________________________
Mike Lewis (Edinburgh, Scotland)

Visual FoxPro articles, tips and downloads

 

[TamarGranor]

Dave Fulton and his wife (whose name escapes me at the moment) were traveling to Antarctica, and totally by coincidence, Susan Graham, who'd been at Fox Software and then at Microsoft (and ran one of the Microsoft VFP beta programs) was on the same ship. Susan was also the one who pretty regularly said "shipping is a feature" late in one of the betas.

Tamar