Clearly, Mr. Mitchell's arguments are slanted toward loosening up copyright restrictions. Therefore, his conclusion is not surprising.

His analysis is flawed to the extent that he does not differentiate between running VFP and distributing the royalty-free runtimes. MS is not saying that people cannot run VFP on Linux. All MS is saying is that people need to have the appropriate license. It is important to note that MS is under no obligation to allow royalty free distribution in the first place.

Software vendors are entitled to earn a profit from their vendors. In ths case, MS has decided to allow free distribution on Windows which in effect, subsidizes the free distribution VFP developers get. Alternatively, MS could say "OK, if you wan't the right to run VFP anywhere, you will need to pay a royalty fee." Right now, the only way to accomplish this is to require people to buy the full dev version for each machine ($600) or to buy a copy of windows for each machine (but not actually use it). Buying a copy of windows would be the cheaper way to go. However, if MS decided to charge say - $50 for each distribution, MS could rightfully do so.

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