The end of GrafX and the future of ReportPro

Well, with all due respect to Brian's efforts and positive intentions he easily earned the 2nd position in damages to the VO community closely following CA. First he gave us hope, then shortly after he announced Vulcan and took the hope away.
I was almost sure that it will fail, and to me it was easy to see why.

The introduction of Vulcan has split the community into 3 segments at least.
It was not presented as a migration path but more like a forced change. Firstly a large number of VO users who were not so fanatical and were a little more adventurous have seen Vulcan as a big enough change and if they change than why not look around what else is there and moved on.
On the OTHER hand, the fanatic/scared or just old fashioned VO-ers like me I guess, stuck with VO, and didn't want to change, and just like me, many others survived with VO to date.
The rest moved to Vulcan but I guess the userbase was not big enough to support. I don't know Vulcan so I can't comment on the product, but the Customer Relation of GrafX alone was sufficient to scare away an already orphaned and disheartened community that was needed to follow in order to succeed. This is just my view, Regards Tom

... and hopefully the X# project will unify them again ...

In X#, we are trying to create something for ourselves and for the community, we are very proud of creating a robust xBase dialect/development tool for .Net that really works and is an already proven path of migration from VO and soon from other dialects as well. In the process, we want to make some money as well and ideally much money :), but that's not the primary driving force.

Also, the X# devtem members we are all good friends one to each other, having a great time working together and when we meet in person. Robert is the guy who first had the vision of creating all this, is the holder of the company behind X# and is running almost all the organizational matters around it, but he is treating everybody in the company as equals, he is completely open about every matter about X# and he respects a lot everybody, as we all have great respect for everybody else, and that includes the X# customers/users as well.

Let's put it this way, matters during the vulcan days were not always exactly like that, which probably has something to do with vulcan not succeeding at the end...

This is to me the typical Fax Machine story...

The Americans (Nashua if I am not mistaken) developed the Fax Machine, however general consensus was it is of no use since we can Telex messages.

The Japanese saw the possibilities, since their language does not Telex very well.

Needless to say everybody uses Fax preferred over Telex even the Americans.

So if we translate that to our current scenario:

The Americans (a company in the USA) developed Vulcan.NET, however general consensus was that enhancements and support was lacking.

The Netherlands saw the possibilities of using Roslyn to fix the problem.

Needless to say everybody uses X# these days (except maybe some Americans, but we not sure).

Did you knew the original VO project, named "Aspen", was a project of Nantucket team located in Germany, and that this project was the cause why CA acquired Nantucket?
So VO really has German origins. And also many of the people that developed it were Germans.

Hi Wolfgang,[quote name="Wolfgang Riedmann"]Did you knew the original VO project, named "Aspen", was a project of Nantucket team located in Germany, and that this project was the cause why CA acquired Nantucket?
[/quote]Yes, I actually met the Aspen team in 1993 at the SA Clipper Devcon. It was also during this conference that the announcement came through that MicroSoft acquired FoxPro. Larry stated that we don't have to worry, they will keep on with development of Clipper and Aspen. So how CA acquire Nantucket is debatable. My take is that Larry got scared that Nantucket would not be able to compete as a small player against MS, and approached CA. Rather take a good buy-out offer than wait for Clipper/Asspen to crumble. Small change for CA to write off. Well CA almost crumbled VO. Hats off to Brian for approaching CA. We probably would all be using different MS languages to develop in, if it was not for him and Robert.

Johan,
[quote name="Johan Nel"]Needless to say everybody uses X# these days except the Americans.[/quote]

You are wrong here. Around 20% of the registered X# subscribers is American. Another 20% is German, 10% Italian (many German speaking btw) and 10% Australian. I will not list the other percentages because that might make some people feel bad.

Robert

Hi Robert,
[quote name="Robert van der Hulst"]Johan,
You are wrong here. Around 20% of the registered X# subscribers is American.[/quote]I have added the part to my message that I did not want to include, but hopefully that correct the statement.

I will not list the other percentages because that might make some people feel bad.

Nope not feeling bad. I am the only shining light in darkest Africa. Hopefully not for long anymore...

Johsn

[quote name="Johan Nel"]
Nope not feeling bad. I am the only shining light in darkest Africa. Hopefully not for long anymore...[/quote]

Actually I did not want to imply that South Africa does not have any subscribers. We have a South African subscriber. I can't tell you who he/she is. That would violate the new European Privacy Rules (GDPR). But of course he/she can step forward if he/she feels the need.

Robert