evan@telly.UUCP (Evan Leibovitch) (01/27/89)
In article <1@dbase.UUCP> awd@dbase.UUCP (Alastair Dallas) writes: > >Not to be overtly commercial, but why not try dBASE IV? It is known to >be friendly to "computer illiterates," it has good variable-length text >support (in 'memo' fields) and it includes a word processor. I think >whoever sold you Framework missed a trick. > >/alastair/ Welcome, Alastair! Nice to see Ashton Tate represented here, considering that _someone_ has to stand up for them here :-). I'm sorry, but unless dBASE IV has better support for memo fields than I recall, (ie, ability to search on a string found in a memo field, the ability to call up the word processor of one's choice to edit it, etc), that won't fit the bill for many free-text systems. Now that THAT'S out of the way... Let me be the first one on the net (there may be many) to express to you my feelings on Ashton Tate's legal assault on Fox Software. I beileve this action is nothing less than odious, and tells the world that dBASE can't beat Fox with a superior product, so they're trying to beat Fox in court. Doesn't speak much for the company's faith that dBASE IV can knock Fox out of the market on technical merits alone. At this time, I and many applications developers I know have begun an informal, unorganized boycott of Ashton Tate products, because money spent on lawyers is not spent on R&D. The legal argument of owning a computer language, even if the company wins, is morally bankrupt. The end result, win or lose, will be the castration of the dBASE aftermarket your company sought to built in better days. I urge you to pass the message on to those making the decisions that this move hurts the users of your products more than it hurts Fox or anyone else. I believe and hope that the users will return the favour until Ashton Tate gets out of the courtroom and back to the lab. -- _____________________________________________________________________ Evan Leibovitch, System Telly, located in beautiful Brampton, Ontario evan@telly.on.ca / {uunet!attcan,utzoo}!telly!evan And, in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make."
awd@dbase.UUCP (Alastair Dallas) (01/29/89)
In article <488@telly.UUCP>, evan@telly.UUCP (Evan Leibovitch) writes: > > Welcome, Alastair! Nice to see Ashton Tate represented here, considering > that _someone_ has to stand up for them here :-). > > I'm sorry, but unless dBASE IV has better support for memo fields than > I recall, (ie, ability to search on a string found in a memo field, the > ability to call up the word processor of one's choice to edit it, etc), > that won't fit the bill for many free-text systems. I'm glad to be here, thank you. I've been reading vnews for years, but concentrating on news groups like comp.lang.c. Someone cross- posted and I discovered comp.databases a few months ago. I'll be glad to answer questions or stand up for Ashton-Tate however I can. dBASE IV offers greatly improved support for memo fields, actually. Thanks for asking, because I happened to write most of the improvements. The AT() function can find a string anywhere in a memo field, and the SUBSTR() function can extract up to 254 characters starting anywhere in a memo. There are other functions as well. We also support writing memo fields to disk files and back again programmatically (with APPEND MEMO and COPY MEMO commands). And we have always supported user-definable memo word processors (since dBASE III replaced dBASE II, anyway). I must admit that I'm a fan of the way Clipper blurs the distinction between memo and character variables, but Clipper memos are limited to 64k characters and dBASE IV memos can contain 1G each (in theory). Using APPEND MEMO and COPY MEMO, dBASE can be used to store voice messages, analog telemetry, virtually anything. I'd be curious to hear your wish list for memos. > Let me be the first one on the net (there may be many) to express > to you my feelings on Ashton Tate's legal assault on Fox Software. I > beileve this action is nothing less than odious, and tells the world > that dBASE can't beat Fox with a superior product, so they're trying > to beat Fox in court. Doesn't speak much for the company's faith that > dBASE IV can knock Fox out of the market on technical merits alone. As for our suit against Fox, it would be improper for me to say anything except that I have nothing to do with that aspect of my company; I haven't spoken to Ed Esber in years. I can offer a few general opinions, however. Is it good for companies in the early years of a new technology to sue each other like Edison did with the movie business? I don't think so, in general, not because it is morally reprehensible but because the only winners are the lawyers, and innovation is sometimes delayed. On the other hand, sometimes innovation is spurred on by the need to avoid getting sued. > At this time, I and many applications developers I know have begun an > informal, unorganized boycott of Ashton Tate products, because money spent > on lawyers is not spent on R&D. The legal argument of owning a computer > language, even if the company wins, is morally bankrupt. The end result, > win or lose, will be the castration of the dBASE aftermarket your company > sought to built in better days. If you write an office management system for realtors, say, you're not inventing the hardware and you're probably using operating system and DBMS technology. All you're bringing to the party is the organization of the screens and menus--the design and specific implementation of a system, which can take longer to perfect than the writing of the actual code. Your arguments that Ashton-Tate is wrong and should be boycotted may have some validity, but if you produced a non-trivial system and watched a competitor steal your market share because he didn't have to take the time to design the program, merely implement it--if you had that background and still denounced Ashton-Tate's lawsuit, I'd have more respect for your position. Boycott if you will--it may have an affect on the front office, it may not. I personally have no intention of asking my company to desist, largely because it had no affect when I asked them not to sue Wayne Ratliff and his company. The proliferation of lawsuits such as Apple/Microsoft/HP just tells me that the computer industry is just learning to stand on its wobbly legs; and that CEOs have too much money and too many lawyers on staff. > I urge you to pass the message on to those making the decisions that > this move hurts the users of your products more than it hurts Fox or > anyone else. I believe and hope that the users will return the favour > until Ashton Tate gets out of the courtroom and back to the lab. That said, I can assure you that we have seen no slackening of the development pace at A-T, far from it. We've had belt-tightening excercises in the past, in which every department except development was cut back. We're "in the lab" full time and to the extent that dBASE is not as fast as FoxBase right now, its because we gave priority to adding features, such as the memo field support I just mentioned. It's one thing to write an exact clone, but quite another to maintain industry leadership. But we (technical people) fully intend to have it all. Taken all-for-all I believe dBASE IV is better than any of its competitors. I'm working to make that true point-by-point, as well. Now, what can I tell you about memo fields? :-) /alastair/ PS: Thanks for the soap box. > _____________________________________________________________________ > Evan Leibovitch, System Telly, located in beautiful Brampton, Ontario > evan@telly.on.ca / {uunet!attcan,utzoo}!telly!evan > And, in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make." Needless to say, these opinions are my own and my company has no knowledge of my actions here.
emuleomo@yes.rutgers.edu (Emuleomo) (02/01/89)
The law suit filed by Ashton-Tate on Fox software just further convinces me about the superiority of Foxbase+. Now, I eagerly await Foxbase/SQL so that i can use SQL commands on my "Dbase" data files. --Emuleomo O.O.
louis@auvax.UUCP (Louis Schmittroth) (02/04/89)
In article <488@telly.UUCP>, evan@telly.UUCP (Evan Leibovitch) writes:
: to you my feelings on Ashton Tate's legal assault on Fox Software. I
: beileve this action is nothing less than odious, and tells the world
: that dBASE can't beat Fox with a superior product, so they're trying
: to beat Fox in court. Doesn't speak much for the company's faith that
: dBASE IV can knock Fox out of the market on technical merits alone.
I want to echo this sentiment. It is clear that the language is public
domain, and that Ashton Tate should be boycotted.
I intend to sell FoxBase over dBASE IV as a reaction to this suit.
--
Louis Schmittroth, Computer Science, Athabasca University
auvax!louis