timk@egvideo.UUCP (Tim Kuehn) (02/04/89)
In article <6@dbase.UUCP> awd@dbase.UUCP (Alastair Dallas) writes: > Stuff about dBase III development deleted... >*This is not to imply that dBASE is or is not a generic public domain >language--I don't care to express an opinion on that at this time. Recently in Business Computer News (a Canadian Publication) one of their contributors (Rod Potter) made a comment about the Fox-Ashton Tate lawsuits and where the dBase language came from / was based on. (what follows is a paraphrase of the original article) Originally dBase was named Vulcan by the programmer who started the whole thing (Wayne Ratliff). Wayne based his program on something he found at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory called JPLDIS (JPL Display and Information Systems). Wayne beleived that JPLDIS was acutally a clone/rip off of an IBM product called Retrieve which was running on some time-sharing systems. So there was a kind of progression from Retrieve (IBM) to JPLDIS (owned by the US. Gov't) to Vulcan to dBase. As Ratliff later commented in InfoWorld "The (dbase) language was designed at US taxpayer expense at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. It doesn't belong to anyone." (comments on developers building on other developer's work, etc followed). The author of this article based part of this information on the book "Programmers at Large" (Microsoft Press). +-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ |Timothy D. Kuehn timk@egvideo | |TDK Consulting Services !watmath!egvideo!timk | |871 Victoria St. North, Suite 217A | |Kitchener, Ontario, Canada N2B 3S4 (519)-741-3623 | +-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
gm@romeo.cs.duke.edu (Greg McGary) (02/08/89)
In article <1914@egvideo.UUCP> timk@egvideo.UUCP (Tim Kuehn) writes: >[...Stuff about the true origins of the dBase language (including > comments from Wayne Ratliffe) deleted...] > >The author of this article based part of this information on the >book "Programmers at Large" (Microsoft Press). Close, but the book is really entitled _Programmers_At_Work_. Fun reading... -- Greg McGary -- 4201 University Drive #102, Durham, NC 27707 voice: (919) 490-6037 -- {decvax,hplabs,seismo,mcnc}!duke!gm data: (919) 493-5953 -- gm@cs.duke.edu