Your involvement

[Fairlight]

>From inside the gravity well of a singularity, Bud Henschen shouted:
> Sockets we feel will open new opportunities for development and sales to 
> increase your business.  We hope to release an XML version of filePro this 
> year which can be used with the sockets.  The sockets and XML should give 
> you the ability to communicate with various databases and platforms.

Rumour mill has it that sockets are an additional-charge licensed item.
Can you actually call that part of the integral 5.6 feature set if it
needs to be licensed separately?  Perhaps the rumour mill is wrong.  I
would hope so.  But if not, then I wouldn't consider that a 5.6 feature,
technically.  The reality is that the functionality has been in fP for a
while now, and simply not documented.  A simple 'strings' on the binaries
shows that, regardless of what extra knowledge the rumour mill gives me.
This isn't new--it was, to my understanding, necessary for client/server
for fPGI.  My point is, it's not new--it's simply been undocumented.  To
charge -extra- licensing for something that's been embedded in fP for
several years somehow doesn't seem right to me.

As for XML, as I said at the time, if it's export-only, that's of limited
value, as everyone can already write XML out of filePro quite easily with
the existing toolset.  The only thing I've hear[d] from you or anyone else
is about an XML exporter.  If an importer "wizard" or facility is not
included, I think development time is being wasted, because that's where
the need is.

> needs.  Mark, we even discussed doing partial releases and rolling into a 
> major release; therefore, I am surprised at some comment concerning features 
> and pre-release versions. We are trying to provide the features required for 
> you all to stay competitive and catch up with technology.

Yes we did discuss that.  If your point is that you have done partial
releases leading up to 5.6, please point me towards the incremental
release version numbers, as I'm aware of only 5.0.14, and then the 5.6
currently in beta.  If that was adopted, it doesn't appear to have been
made public knowledge.  I know of nothing between 5.0.14 and 5.6 that's
official.  There are rumours of "pre-release" 5.6 versions for people that
needed things included in it, but it's not in keeping with the scheme we
discussed, of which you seemed to like the idea at the time.

What we discussed was -specifically- gathering all the features desired for
the next major release, prioritizing the short development time ones, and
splitting them over three incremental releases.  The long development time
features would be worked on all year, and make up the 4th quarterly update,
which would make the "major release".  Users would have theoretically paid
less, but incrementally for the minor upgrades, and gotten a price break
on the major upgrade depending on how many of the interim updates they'd
purchased, thereby giving fP-Tech a reasonable and more steady revenue
stream from the product and its ongoing development.  You seemed to agree
that this was a good idea at the time.  May I ask what happened?

Also keep in mind that I said the feature set for releases, specifically
the major releases, had to be -compelling-, or the adoption rate would be
marginal.  There are precisely two things that I find partly compelling
for this release: nested CALLs, and 64bit I/O.  We'll table sockets for
now, as the licensing is unclear and not officially stated--all I have is
rumour.  The rest of what I've heard doesn't sound like enough to justify a
huge expenditure in upgrading, for say...100+ golf courses, or a chain of
hotels, or restaurants, etc.  It all depends on what the developer of their
packages uses and needs, of course.  And hardcore fP developers are going
to find some of the upcoming features far more compelling than I do.  

But by and large, you're talking about your current userbase being your
biggest audience right now.  None of the features going into 5.6 make the
case for newcomers to ante up.  64bit I/O will keep them from being scared
off and immediately dismissive.  TCP/IP is kind of encouraging--but is
only a low-level API that -could- be used to develop things that still
best belong integrated into the core (say, MySQL compatability).  Pretty
much most of the rest of it all relates to current fP users that know what
half the features actually relate to.  And even then, I'm not sure it's
compelling enough for many of them.  I guess time will tell on this one.

There is truth to what you say about those features you cited having been
addressed, screen size still being an outstanding issue.  And your actually
saying something goes -some- distance in at least communicating with the
community.  I respect that.  I'd prefer (and think everyone would) that
you kept a dialogue open with the community, rather than judging it by a
few discussions.  Blemishes and all, this is the community you rely on in
large part to generate your filePro revenue.  And you must know that, or
you wouldn't have made a plea to them to recommend people upgrade.  But
people are really desperate to have a common, open, and -transparent- line
of communication open with management, and you -can- accomodate that by
participating more often.  I hope you do.  For the moment, you've given
everyone -something-, and that's a good start.

However, you still haven't addressed John's (and others') main point in
stating any overall direction past 5.6.  You really just stated what's
coming in 5.6, and mentioned a future [nonspecific] "XML [enabled?]
filePro".  Your only statement regarding anything but XML for the future
was:

     "Wish list items will be included along with major features when time
     permits and resources are available."

This doesn't prioritise or give even a rough estimate of -which- items and
-what- features are in the pipe for the future.  It's a vague assurance of
one nonspecific feature that won't help anyone actually plan anything in
any helpful detail.  And the specific information is what people are asking
for so they can do just that--plan.  These companies have to plan often a
whole fiscal year ahead, sometimes on a budget that makes Homer Simpson's
hair look thick and lush.  They need advance intel on what direction
they can expect to have to move in.  This is where a more persistant and
constant dialogue with management, in the open, would benefit everyone
involved.

Now that we have you talking, could you please address the future past 5.6?

Bests,

mark->