June 29, 2002 10:18 ET

Eric Rudder

Dear Hugh, Michel, Universal Thread, and the FoxPro Community:

On behalf of the FoxPro team, I want to send my thanks for the “Microsoft and FoxPro 10 Year Anniversary Card” from the community. We received the special anniversary hats and shirts, and of course, we enjoyed the airplane flying over the Microsoft campus on June 21st! This effort means a lot to me personally, since I worked on the Fox team for many years, and was intimately involved with the design and development of Visual FoxPro version 3.0.

I know the Visual FoxPro team was very excited about the comments included in the card presented by the FoxPro community. The airplane and FoxPro banner was witnessed by many folks in Redmond, and all of us considered the effort very cool! The VFP team is busy working on the next version, code named “Toledo,” which I have personally reviewed, and I know developers will be super excited about the new features we have in store. (You'll learn a lot more about Visual FoxPro 8.0 at VFP DevCon 2002 this fall!)

Here at Microsoft, community relations are increasingly important throughout the company. Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer and I are very supportive of community efforts and we view this thank you from the FoxPro community as a great example of communities and Microsoft working together.

Thanks again to everyone involved in this effort and all the comments in the card. I'll be sure to wear my new “10 Year Anniversary” hat the next time the sun shines here in Seattle!

Regards,

Eric Rudder
Senior Vice President, Developer and Platform Evangelism
Microsoft