Thursday, May 29, 2008

"Microsoft to release FoxPro ‘Sedna’ as Shared Source" (Article: Mary-Jo Foley)

Link Here


From the comments:

Shared Source isn't Open Source. Wait to see which of their Shared Source licenses they're using before you get excited about this.

Another:

It's getting old...'m all for new technology, but I'm getting tired of being forced to migrate working systems just for Microsoft's benefit. Let's see, in the past decade or so we've had NT, 2000, XP SP1, VB6, MFC, COM, COM+, now FoxPro. They were each portrayed as the greatest thing ever in their time, now (or soon to be) no longer supported. Many of us took the bait but also got the hook. Now we're being forced to migrate over what should be minor issues (like a new DST schedule).

Most processes will need to be upgraded at some point, but generally not until an underlying business rule changes, and I resent being forced to "fix" something that isn't broken.

It makes sense that a commercial software vendor can't afford to support old systems indefinitely. With open source, however, a package will be updated as long as there are users (Apache Server 1.x). Even an unpopular open source system can be maintained by hiring a programmer for the occasional DST fix, which could be a lot cheaper than upgrading a farm of servers. Going forward I'll be using open source whenever possible.
Another:

A project with a vibrant user base would never get dropped if it was open source. That only happens in the proprietary world.
Like the other poster said, they are still even maintaining Apache 1.x versions.

If you have the source, it is not much work to at least do security and DST like fixes.
Another:

True, FoxPro is scheduled to die a slow death.
That, even though there is a large and vibrant user community.
Another reason to not use closed source.

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