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Great Lakes Closing Session: Where Whil's Heading

Great but short closing session from Great Lakes: Where To Go.

Whil's comment: "People ask me what to do...for years, it hasn't been clear, but now it is."

Whil is heading into Linux full steam ahead but that doesn't mean that Fox is dead.

A quick survey of the audience showed (gasp!) about 40% of attendees were STILL maintaining FoxBase and FoxPro/DOS code. (WOW!!!!)

That's 10 years old code - that would mean that in 10 years, we may still be able to work maintaining VFP 8 or later code.

That may be a bit of a stretch but the numbers would certainly make sense.

From Whil's thoughts: ten years ago, the Fox market was 2 million, it's now about 200,000 developers... user group attendance is down from 200 to about 9 to 20 - Dot Net is not where it's at because it means, for other reasons, competing with 10 million other developers currently moving to Dot Net from VB, C+, etc. Linux on the other hand represents a much more open opportunity. A Chance to get in at the bottom instead of the end...

Whil will CONTINUE to promote Fox running on Linux until he's fired (his words)

You know --- listening to him, it makes a lot of good sense. Many people got to install Linux at Great Lakes (including Drew Speedy) so who knows...

That doesn't mean Fox is dead - Henztenwerke is still publishing books on it and will as long as it makes money - but realistically the Open source books have outsold the Fox books for quite some time...

Dates to note:
Essential Fox: June 4-7 Kansas City
Great Lakes Next Year Oct 29-30-31 - wonder if he'll be dressed as Gene Simmons again

Great show Whil - look forward to it next year...

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