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Reach the living xBase communities (Harbour, VFP, r/foxpro) #77

Description

@DDecoene

Cheap, high-affinity distribution that has never been touched. See docs/roadmap-v1.4-v1.5.md.

Why

The launch went to HN, r/retrocomputing and (scheduled) r/vintagecomputing — retro audiences, who receive this as nostalgia. But xBase never actually died, and those communities have never been told this exists:

  • Harbour — an actively maintained open-source Clipper compiler. Raised unprompted on HN: "my company looked at Harbour (https://harbour.github.io/) as a 'quick way' to get some of our account payable systems onto the web" — nobleach
  • Visual FoxPro diaspora — still shipping and maintaining real systems.
  • r/foxpro, and the Clipper/xHarbour forums.

"FoxPro and Clipper next."
ljosifov, HN

"I know someone still running their business from programs I wrote in Clipper for them when Clinton was president. They just begun their conversion to SQL about a month ago."
— blakester555, r/retrocomputing

These people didn't use xBase — they never stopped. They are the most qualified critics this project could have, and the ones most likely to say something useful about #73 and #74.

Scope

  • Post to the Harbour community (GitHub Discussions / forum) — lead with the interpreter and the parity table, not nostalgia. These people will test the language.
  • r/foxpro + the VFP community.
  • Reach out to mamcx (tablam.org) directly — a peer chasing the same thesis, not an audience to market to.
  • Frame as "what did I get wrong", which is what produced the best feedback both previous times.

Cadence

Space these out. Do not blast them the same day; r/retrocomputing's rule 5 asks about repeat self-posting, and the subs share subscribers.

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