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Microsoft to Open Source FoxPro
rah1420 writes "Microsoft has announced that it will open-source the core portions of the Visual FoxPro DBMS software to its CodePlex community development site. At the same time, Microsoft has announced that it will no longer be making new versions of the FoxPro DBMS."
See first comment in the article by a Microsoftie:
.NET framework, wrappers for Vista APIs to make it easier to write applications that run on Vista machines, as well as better support for VFP data in Visual Studio.
NOTE that the released part is Sedna and NOT VFP nor VFP core elements!
Sedna is a project Microsoft has been working on for the past year or so. Sedna is built using the extensibility model of VFP9 and provides features like better connectivity to SQL Server, integration with parts of the
Will the Rushmore technology that was so attractive to Microsoft in the first place be included in whatever they release? The way I understand it, Microsoft bought FoxPro from FoxBase to get Rushmore to add to Access 2, and then they wanted to dump FP. Apparently there was such a vocal outcry that they've kept FoxPro going, until now.
I'm curious because I really want to know what made FoxPro the speed demon it's always purported to be. I read somewhere that it was the first dbase-class database program that used bitmap indexes, but that was contradicted by another article from somewhere else.
I wish all companies would open-source or at least make available free-as-in-beer their obsolete-and-non-competing products. If they can't make it free, then make it $1.
Except for games, which have a commercial nostalgia market, most software over 10-15 years old wouldn't be commercially viable even if it did run on the latest operating systems.
I for one would love to fire up Windows 3.1 with a 15 year old copy of Microsoft Word and print to my Postscript printer, just to see how fast it is on my modern PC.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
I'm glad we have someone to grammar our articles.
"Waste not one watt!" - CZ
I don't suppose anyone knows what open source license the software in question was released under? I looked in the article, without success.
Don't verb that adjective! It bad's the language.
Excuse me, I have to go full my belly.
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I've been programming in various versions of FP since 1989 or so (FoxBase+). Since the language is built around the idea of manipulating tables, doing so is incredibly easy compared to the awful hoops you have to jump through in more modern or general purpose languages (Java, perl, python, C/C++).
That said, it feels very dated working in VFP. Especially with things like arrays, which are horribly crippled compared to the equivalent in perl or python. VFP's OO-ness isn't all it could be, either. I'd hoped the 'open source' part of the announcement would mean someone (maybe I?) would be able to add associative arrays to the language, but there is some confusion about whether VFP itself or some derivative called 'Sedna' is actually being open sourced. I need to find out more.
I heartily agree. I've been bitten many times by abandoned software, Animator Pro on DOS had a sort-of spiritual successor in Animator Studio, but it died there, lost between Windows 3.1 and 95. Blender was nearly lost to a similar fate; fortunately enough money was raised to buy out the source and release it under the GPL.
Being at the software vendor's mercy for an application's longevity sucks hard, and it's one of the reasons I've been embracing Free and open software so passionately. As long as anyone still cares, the program will live on. Good software shouldn't die. That said, anything related to FoxPro can and should be erased from existance as soon as possible as far as I'm concerned, but surely somebody's happy about this, so good for them.
I know Access uses JET, but I haven't run across anything saying Exchange uses it... If they did, I could use eseutil to fix this stupid broken Access mdb I was just told about today instead of the not-working jetcomp.exe tool.
Apparently ESE stands for Extensible Storage Engine as well...so I'm gonna have to say Exchange doesn't use JET.
Microsoft Open Source License: You can look, but you can't touch.
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It would be nice to see Microsoft start to open source (that is with a GPL or equivelant license) at least some of their products. But why FoxPro? This is the same software package which got Microsoft into trouble over copyrights. I believe all the "intellectual property" issues surrounding FoxPro have long been settled, am I right?
burnin
That was the first question that came to mind for me, too.
The relevant part of the actual announcement on Microsoft's site reads "To reiterate, today we are announcing that we are not planning on releasing a VFP 10 and will be releasing the completed Sedna work on CodePlex at no charge. The components written as part of Sedna will be placed in the community for further enhancement as part of our shared source initiative. You can expect to see the Sedna code on CodePlex sometime before the end of summer 2007."
Shared Source is not Open Source.
Further comments, apparently ESE was meant to succeed the Access JET, but that didn't happen.
n gine
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extensible_Storage_E
So it's apparently a flavor of JET...but different.
I could "see" them opening JET Red (Access) in about 10 years, because there are no plans to make it 64 bit, but not JET Blue (ESE/Exchange). That'd open up Exchange and MS wouldn't want to do that.
Between FoxPro and VB it just amazes me that any company can afford to repeatedly crap on it's customers and still survive.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
Take note, Microsoft has (to appearances, at least, while waiting to see if they provide everything necessary to compile up and run the current FP release) done something good here. Would that all other software companies follow suit with orphaned software.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
That seems pretty definitive to me.
For clarification: Sedna (the stuff that's going into CodePlex) is not now (nor was it ever intended to be) the next version of Visual Foxpro. It's just a set of VFP-based tools intended to help current VFP developers to make better use of new features in Vista/SQL Server/etc...
Meanwhile, VFP 9 is getting a final service pack and then that's it as far as Microsoft is concerned. There's certainly no plans to open-source the IDE or the VFP engine because, frankly, Microsoft would never do that. Some of the technology (and people) from VFP is going towards the LINQ project, but
It breaks my pluginses, my precious!
This is probably a money-making plot on Microsoft's part. They will "open source" it, but then when you read the million pages of fine print, you find out that it isn't open-sourced under GPL, but instead, they'll probably rather put it under one of their own crafted licenses that says that if you modify and redistribute and portions of the code, you must include the string "I like porcupines" and a link to the Microsoft homepage.
And then when someone does redistribute it like other source code (without reading the M$ license), they'll sit quietly for about 3 or 4 years, while this person's redistributed code becomes ever more popular. Eventually, it will become incorporated in digital cameras worldwide, database software that drives the next Google, and your next-generation toaster.
Approximately 1 year after that happens, and $1 billion have been made off the redistributed code, Microsoft will sue for not following the license. They will cite the fact that "I like porcupines" is not in the code and that a link to the Microsoft homepage is not included. They will complain that the lack of a link to Microsoft will have decreased Vista sales by $3 billion (because, naturally, the price of their OS is probably 3 times that of the code in question). They will demand the profits, win the case, and said company will have the option of either paying the legal fees, or being bought out by Microsoft.
On another note, "open source" of itself does not always mean "free to redistribute", it just means you get to view the source.
Actually, I think it richens the language.
I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.
It's only fast at running code in it's own language? You don't say! I'd be pretty impressed at any language that could run code written in another language.
Perhaps what you meant to say was that Foxpro is only fast when dealing with data. In that case you are correct. I wouldn't write a protein-folding program in Foxpro, because, well, that would be stupid. But there's no language in the world that works with data as well as FP.
Fortunately for you, though, Microsoft is not really making anything of significance open-source. Though Foxpro's death will only be assured when they turn out the lights in 2015.
It breaks my pluginses, my precious!
I guess there is still hope that they will FINALLY open up the code to Bob! I can hardly wait! I'm dizzy with excitement over how I can apply this awesome technology and UI breakthrough in my Vista apps!
FoxPro? Who still uses FoxPro?! What ancient MS product is next?...
Although they never got their GUI conventions right, the XBase language was outstanding for ad-hoc and small-scale data chomping. You can tell it was invented by people who had to deal with data and tables all day long.
Unlike MS-Access, there was an easy path to ad-hoc manipulations and script writing. In MS-Access the language world and mouse world are too distinct. Xbase allows a more incrimental, integrated approach.
And unlike SQL, it easily allows one to do cursor-oriented manipulation and see intermediate results. Sometimes cursoring around is easier than bulk, declaritive queries that SQL gives you. Newer dialects of XBase incorporated SQL to allow one to use whichever is best for a task. (However, index dictionaries were never standardized across dialects.)
I used to do all kinds of table-oriented stuff in XBase, like store programming code or expressions in the tables. Think of it as Design Patterns where you can easily query, search, and print the patterns rather than dig thru linear code. It was also easy to generate tables programatically. Meta-programming was a snap. Data dictionaries could drive a lot of the app, even the GUI.
The newer stuff tends to put bulky API's between you and the data, which slows one down. There is no such fense in Xbase (usually a good thing for productivity, but it does have its downsides if you are not careful and not used to it.)
Ah, the good ol' days. -Tablizer-
Table-ized A.I.
Please don't be to harsh when you mod me for this speculation: What if Microsoft open sources this product with a different goal in mind? For instance, maybe M$ is curious to see what new ideas become of their abandonware? Perhaps, the community might give it a new lease on life and re-develop a market for it? Should that happen M$ could close the source again, if the license is not GPL, LGPL, or BSD. Just my thoughts anyway
There is an open source project inspired by VFP but based on python. It's called Dabo http://dabodev.com/ . Check it out if you are interested in getting on board with something that isn't obselete.
evil is as evil does
maybe that's why Microsoft is having so much trouble with OSS... they don't know what it is
Consider yourself spoken to.
Well there it is! I worked with VFP starting with version 6, and when version 8 came out the rumors started flying about VFP being discontinued at some point. Microsoft fired back saying that the lack of VFP in Visual Studio didn't mean anything, and they would be continuing development and supporting all the VFP code out there for some time to come. Well, looks like the rumors were right.
And I really don't care, because when I started hearing those rumors I started searching for a replacement, just in case. I found DABO, which was created by a couple of VFP supporters from back in the day. It's built on Python, has a data model which mimics in many ways the simplicity and robustness of VFP. Plus it can use any database for the back end! It's open source, free, and getting better all the time; and it's not even at version 1 yet! I've only been tinkering with DABO, but now it's time to move.
Yes, I used FoxPro back in the early nineties. It was a great product under Fox, but when Microsoft purchased it, they supported it only for a while, then let it languish while they pushed Access (an UTTER POS with all the "reliability" and brain-dead design decisions Microsoft is known for).
I was at a computer show in San Francisco standing at the FoxPro booth actually when I heard that Microsoft had bought them.
But I don't think the "Jet" engine came from Foxpro. I might be wrong about that. I think the Access engine and the FoxPro engines were separate for a long time. A quick Google indicates that Microsoft bought Fox for their "Rushmore" database technology which ended up being included in Jet.
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A few years ago, I ran into a couple of FoxPro-based applications and I learned a little about the history of the product.
FoxPro was rather popular with application writers and there are still a lot of small business applications based on it. Apart from the technical merits, it had one big advantage over MS Access: you could bundle FoxPro with your application for free, while Access required an Office license for each PC.
Microsoft bought the company mainly to destroy a competitor. They ended up supporting the product for a long time, probably due to support contracts.
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