Support for Visual Basic 6 (VB 6) will end in 2008, Microsoft has announced. The policy gives customers a definite timeline on which to base decisions regarding application deployment, developer training, and migration to Visual Basic .NET (VB.NET). VB.NET, the successor to VB 6, is part of Microsoft's new .NET development platform and is not backward compatible with VB 6. (See the Feb. 2002 Research Report, "The .NET Development Platform.") The new support policy applies only to Visual Basic but may eventually apply to other development tools, such as Visual C++.

Limited VB Support After 2004

Under the new policy, VB 6 will be retired in two major phases.

In the first or mainstream phase, which ends in Jan. 2005, all standard Microsoft support offerings will be available, including Premier Support, free phone and online per-incident support, free Critical Updates (also known as "HotFix" or "QFE" support), and service packs.

In the second or extended phase, only paid per-incident support will be available, and updates will no longer be free but will be available for a fee. After the extended phase has expired, no support will be provided.

Volume licensing customers will be able to obtain new licenses for VB 6 by licensing VB.NET and then "downgrading" to VB 6, and VB 6 will also be available for download to MSDN subscribers until the end of 2003. In addition, media will be available for customers who choose to downgrade.

Other Tool Support Under Review

The new support policy for VB 6 is a change from the previous "n minus 2" support policy in which the current version of a tool along with the two previous versions was supported. Under the previous plan, the exact date at which support would end was unknown and was dependent on the length of time between releases of the product.

Microsoft has not changed the support policy for any of its other development tools, but is reviewing policies for those products. If the VB 6 policy were applied to the other tools in the Visual Studio suite, the mainstream phase would run for six years from its general availability date, followed by the extended phase from seven to nine years after general availability. This would mean that most of the other products in the Visual Studio 6 suite would also be retired in 2008.

For more information on the VB product life-cycle and support, see msdn.microsoft.com/vbasic/support/vb6.asp.