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The idea to have the history of FoxPro told is very old, as far as I could notice, and found in many places people asking for information about it. I got curious, too, to know as much I could about it, because I am an enthusiast of FoxPro and admire all people that made it a reality and still are making it available for our great pleasure.

The idea to write this history was hammering in my mind for a while, then in october 16, 2001 I posted a message in The Universal Thread starting a thread - #568966 (you have to be logged in the Universal Thread in order to check this link) - that called some attention from people who gave me help and support to begin this task.

I'm not really sure how this document will evolve and what its final shape will look like. So the best way I found to start, was to seek, gather and organize all information available, contact people that were active participants in this history as to many other ones that followed the steps of FoxPro since its very beginning, asking for their help and support, meanwhile formating this document in the best way possible.

I hope to count, as I am already counting, on help and support coming from many people of our great community, suplying me with names, dates, facts, stories, anedoctes, sources of information etc. This work is not a work I'll be doing, instead it is a collaborative work of all of us. I'm just the guy that is hearing what you have to tell me about the history of FoxPro and doing the document writing.

I hope you understand that from the beginning of this work there will be some confusion, missing or wrong information, unconnected events etc. But this is how things will look when I start to just paste information gathered into this document. Your help, besides, giving me information, can be in warning me about things not matching, giving me advice and ideas in how this work could be done etc.

You don't need to know the history of FoxPro to help me. Play the role of the "reader" willing to know the history, finding gaps that the "author" must fill in, things that deserve further detail, facts that are not mentioned, or as a "reviewer" that checks for inconsistences or inadequacies.

I was born and live in Brazil, so a portuguese speaking person, and can barely express myself in english, so I ask you to pardon me for mistakes I certainly will make when writing. As time permits I will be reviewing the whole document to correct writing errors, but if you find grammatical or syntatical errors, please let me know, I'll correct them and will be very happy to thank you.

When this work gets finished (who knows exactly what "finished" means in a work like this? The history of FoxPro, will have no end for the next many years!) we will have a collection of related web pages that can be accessed by whomever wants it (please see "Copyright Information").

You can find some more information on how this work started in this Universal Thread article.

As of December 19, 2003, Foxprohistory.ORG is being managed by our great fellow Eric den Doop, on a server located in The Netherlands. As most of you know, Eric was recently recognized as a MVP (Most Valuable Professional) for his fabulous work in the FoxPro community. He runs www.foxite.com and contributes to developers newsgroups and forums.
I want to thank very very much all those people who helped and supported me that during the two years that I hosted this web site. I want to give a special THANKS! to Lisa Slater Nicholls, that extraordinary person that I had the honor to know and that gave me advice and contribution, in such a manner I can tell that without it I'd never have achieved my goal. Thanks Lisa!
Thank you very much, each one of my fellow VFP developers, who I had the opportunity to know and share information with. Thank you all who supported me and all who contributed to the web site.
I wish Eric good luck in this new enterprise and I'm sure he will give a new life to The History of FoxPro web site adding new ideas and putting his touch on it, making it much better than it is now. Thank you Eric for your kind acceptance of this duty!"

Thank you all, and join us!

   Fernando Alvares