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“Not a Strategic Product”
Enough disclaimers, let’s get to the subject at hand. Microsoft has stated for some time that FoxPro was not a strategic product for them. What does that mean? To my mind, a strategic product is one that Microsoft would invest in heavily and recommend as the primary path for their customers. MS would build upon the technology and form an entire “strategy” around it. VB was strategic. COM was strategic. .NET is strategic. Fox was not. Why not? To answer that, I think you have to look at why Microsoft bought Fox Software in the first place.
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Why Buy Fox?
So, why did Microsoft buy Fox Software. I will quote an article Jordan Powell wrote in FoxTalk when Access 1.0 and FoxPro 2.5 were about to ship:
Microsoft was working on its Access DBMS which uses a modern variant of the BASIC language. It had to have been embarrassing for Microsoft to have such a glaring hole in its product lineup. They had no DBMS, and their partnership with Ashton-Tate failed to get Microsoft SQL Server off the ground. Some of the marketing types at MS realized that FoxPro was the best version of X-Base out there, and had been trying to talk Bill Gates into doing something about it. They knew that the X-Base language commanded a huge segment of the market and that a product which used the X-Base language would get them into the DBMS market in a big way. They had the marketing resources to put behind FoxPro, and Fox had some interesting and useful technology — not to mention some very talented people, the kind Microsoft likes.
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xBase Market Decline
FoxPro was first and foremost a competitor in the xBase market. As that market declined, so did the value of FoxPro as a strategic product to Microsoft. What led to the decline of a technology that had been so popular in the 80’s and early 90’s? Technology trends are constantly changing, but here are few key things that in my opinion diminished the xBase market:
dBASE IV:
dBASE IV was a buggy disaster, and it was two years before they released version 1.1. Borland bought Ashton-Tate, but could not undo the damage. dBASE for Windows was not released until 1994. This was good for FoxPro, which became the biggest fish in the xBase pond, but the pond itself began to shrink.
Lawsuit:
Ashton-Tate sued Fox Software for cloning dBASE. The suit was dropped when Borland bought Ashton-Tate, but it could not have inspired confidence in the xBase market.
Client-Server:
By the early 90’s, client-server technology picked up in popularity and developers were beginning to flock towards database servers and client-server development tools like PowerBuilder and VB. At the same time, Microsoft was trying to enter the server market with Windows NT and SQL Server, so I’m sure there was strong emphasis on this style of development from them. I believe there was talk of a “FoxServer” product at Fox Software, but it never saw the light of day before the Microsoft acquisition.
Those are reasons that the xBase market declined, but about now you’re thinking that VFP is so much more than an xBase tool. I couldn’t agree more. VFP can go toe-to-toe with VB, PowerBuilder, Delphi, .NET, and others. If FoxPro was supposed to “go quietly into the night”, someone forgot to tell the VFP 3.0 team, because they transformed the Fox into a full-fledged OOP development platform ready for the 32-bit world and beyond. So, why wasn’t the emphasis there from Microsoft?
An important point to make about Microsoft is that they are a follower of development trends, not a leader. With a few exceptions (the VB GUI designer comes to mind), Microsoft has not been the one to create a development trend. “Embrace and extend” was their motto, and they have done well with that. Windows was Microsoft’s answer to the Mac. .NET is Microsoft chasing Java into the enterprise. They follow current trends and they do so mercilessly. Even now, Microsoft is emphasizing HTML5, leaving Silverlight developers thinking “Wait, I thought we were on the cutting edge?” It would be out of character for Microsoft to promote and strategize around a product built for a market that was trending downwards. It’s nothing personal against the Fox, it’s just not in their DNA.
FoxPro Market Decline
Even with the xBase decline, if FoxPro revenue had continued upward, I wouldn’t be writing this article. Sales declined, and there are several reasons for that:
Power Users:
Going all the way back to dBASE you could question whether it was a platform for power users with development capabilities or a platform for developers that power users could use. It was both. Visual FoxPro put it squarely in the developer category, and Access took over as the preferred database for power users. The result: much fewer licenses sold.
VB, SQL Server, .NET:
VFP faced a lot of competition from other products within Microsoft. With the emphasis always on the latest trends, many developers felt compelled to move to other technologies.
Visual FoxPro:
That’s right, VFP itself. While VFP 3.0 was a massive improvement in development capabilities (and most of us are happy with that decision), it was also a big leap from FoxPro 2.x in terms of learning curve. It took some developers quite a while to make the jump, and some never did.
Not Invented Here Syndrome:
Microsoft took a great product and made it even better, which makes their treatment of FoxPro all the more frustrating. But Fox was still the stepchild and it was never going to supersede other products developed internally. By the time Microsoft purchased Fox, they had already made significant investments in VB, Access, and SQL Server. Those would be Microsoft’s strategic products while Fox would continue serving the declining xBase market and otherwise fit between the lines.
Why 2007?
People had been foretelling the death of FoxPro since Microsoft bought it in 1992. What made 2007 the year when Microsoft finally decided to cancel it? Had sales declined to the point that Microsoft could no longer justify Fox development? Did they want to use the Fox Team in other parts of Microsoft? Did big customers move to something else? Were the people that cared gone or no longer in a position to do anything about it? Your guess is as good as mine. We will never know.
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There are a couple of ways to look at this: 1) Microsoft always wanted to cancel Fox and they finally got their way, or 2) in spite of Fox not being a strategic product, Microsoft continue to create new versions for Fox developers. I tend to think of it as the latter. While there was always a question of Microsoft’s commitment to FoxPro, by the release of VFP 5, it had become clear that it would not be a strategic product.
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