Petitions and other Silliness

            I just got back from the Developer Connections conference in Orlando. If I had gone for the weather, I would have been sorely disappointed as we were virtually trapped in the hotel the whole week ducking one tornado watch or thunderstorm after another. The lobby at the Hyatt (a very nice hotel) was closed for awhile as the roof leaked and got the parrots wet. Except for one dinner at the White Horse (the sports bar), the food and service were stellar—even that (truly terrible experience) was mitigated by the management who tore up the bill without hesitation. Now that’s service.

When I visited the speaker’s lounge I felt like a caged bear with kids poking me with sharp sticks. It seems that the Microsoft folks in attendance took exception to the Visual Basic 6.0 petition that I signed along with a number of other MVPs. A couple implied that I would be lucky to keep my MVP status because I chose to speak up. Sadly, I think these Microsoft folks just don’t get it. When Microsoft decided (quite some time ago) to “drop support” for Visual Basic 6.0 I don’t think they realized the impact this would have on the companies that used Visual Basic to create commercial applications. Let me put it this way:

Sam starts his day by cruising the internet—he’s looking for new car as his 78 Dodge Dart is getting hard to start—not to mention the smell of dead cat in the backseat. Liking the looks and features of the new Ynhoi, he does a bit of research and discovers that the car uses well-respected and well-understood technology. It’s visually a bit basic on the looks side, but it’s easy to maintain and he knows lots of places where he can get it serviced. Ah, but then he discovers that the engine is built by another large well-respected company—but that company has decided to drop its support in favor of the new hydrogen powercell engine. On top of that, it seems this company supplies engines for most of the cars he’s interested in buying—at least the ones he can afford. He read that the dealer can pay extra for support, but the engine company has already moved its engineers on to perfect the new hydrogen technology.

Sam’s not sure what that means, but he doesn’t want to get stuck with a car that he can’t get serviced a few years from now. He reads all about how the new technology is very cool but wonders if he’ll need a special refueling station or some special changes in his garage framework--he's just not sure. He wonders if it would be foolhardy to choose a car based on apparently dated technology. He doesn’t want to have to convince his wife (who watches the budget like a hawk) that he should buy this new car that has an engine that won’t be around that much longer. He decides to talk to the dealer anyway. The salesman assures him that the car does everything he needs and more and that they intend to support it for years to come. They say that the engine is very reliable as they have had more than ten years to perfect it and match it to the latest XP transmission.  “But what if something goes wrong with the engine in a few years, say in 2008? Will you still be able to get parts?” The dealer turns a bit red, and shuffles as he does not know the answer to this question—one that he’s been getting a lot lately. He knows his own company is years away from creating a hydrogen powercell model and he’s not really sure he’ll be in business in 2008.

Sam decides to wait on buying a new car for awhile. He wants to see how the new hydrogen engines hold up under real driving conditions and until there are more people out there that can service them. Who knows, perhaps by the time he’s ready to buy, the technology might have changed again. He remembers hearing about that new Longhorn transmission but he’s not seen any of the new hydrogen engines work with it. When Sam calls the dealer a week later to ask another question he finds they’ve closed their doors as have some of the other car dealers in town. He feels lucky that he didn’t buy that car after all—and then his old clunker starts to make that noise again.

I think it's too bad Microsoft can’t take back their decision to stop support—the dye is cast. It’s probably too late for the tens of thousands of software vendors who sell Visual Basic 6.0-based applications as many of these companies can’t afford to retool—not in these hard times--even if they knew how. I expect that it will take some pretty serious back-peddling and fence mending to get the market to trust Visual Basic again—in any form.