vom: 07.08.2001 von: Jürgen Wondzinski woody@prolib.de
VFP Product News  
Hier ist der volle Wortlaut des Statements von Robert Green, seines Zeichens "Visual Studio Product Manager" (und auch ein alter FoxPro Hase)

When we announced back in February that Visual FoxPro would no longer ship in the Visual Studio .NET box, we promised two things: 1) We would be on our own ship schedule and 2) We could do more marketing.

That we are on our own ship schedule is pretty clear. We RTM'ed Visual FoxPro a month ago and it will soon be available in stores. I have a dozen boxes of it in my office (and that is after giving a bunch to the product team ) so I can vouch that it is done. MSDN Universal subscribers can download it now and it will be in the September shipment (we apologize for the delay in getting it up on the MSDN servers and into the monthly shipments). We are very proud of VFP 7.0 and we think it makes for a great upgrade.

As most of you know, shortly after RTM we discovered a couple of bugs. The fixes were made and updates are currently available on the Visual FoxPro Web site. Talk about our own ship schedule! I know there were some mixed emotions on this. We basically had 2 choices: 1) wait until a Service Pack to release fixes or 2) get fixes out to the community as quickly as we could. We chose option 2 and we stick by that decision.

Those of you who have already installed VFP 7.0 can download the fixes and apply them. Those who haven't already installed VFP 7.0 can select the option at the end of the install to check for updates. When you do you will see the fixes and can download and apply them immediately as part of the install process. Being out of the Visual Studio box gives us the freedom to post fixes and issue Service Packs when we feel the need. We think this makes us more responsive to your needs and we like the flexibility.

As for marketing, we have been planning for a long time to increase the marketing. We just needed the right resources. I am very happy today to announce that as of today, Ken Levy has returned to Microsoft as the new Visual FoxPro Product Manager. Ken will be part of the Fox team and will report directly to Ricardo Wenger. Ken brings a tremendous knowledge of the product as well as a seemingly limitless energy level and we are thrilled to add him to the team.

Ken's initial focus will be to provide greatly expanded support to the Visual FoxPro community. He will take over the Visual FoxPro Web site and drive lots of new content, both technical content for beginners and experts and also things like case studies and success stories so you have materials you can readily use to show why Visual FoxPro is a smart choice for a project. Ken will work with MSDN to get the technical information into the MSDN Library. He will also speak at conferences and will make his keynote debut at DevCon in San Diego in September. Ken and I have spent a lot of time the past few weeks swapping ideas and I will let him share more of them with you.

What is my role now? Consider me kicked upstairs. I will work closely with Ricardo and Ken to determine what we need to do, but Ken will drive making it happen. When I am not working on VFP, I will be focused on launching Visual Studio .NET, which is nearing completion. I will still lurk around here of course, and speak up from time to time.

Getting Ken on board is awesome news for all of us, and I am thrilled to announce it today.

Robert Green
Visual Studio Lead Product Manager
Microsoft