[comp.databases] Hello Ashton-Tate!

timk@egvideo.UUCP (Tim Kuehn) (01/27/89)

In article <488@telly.UUCP> evan@telly.UUCP (Evan Leibovitch) writes:
>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

because I've tried dBase III +

>>
>>/alastair/

	[clipped]

>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'll be the second (third...fourth...whatever...)

> 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

[clip]

>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. 

etc....


I agree wholeheartedly. I and other collegues in my field have had 
encounters with the 'III+' series of dBase products. I don't know HOW many 
hours of downtime or just plain lost time I can attribute to problems with 
the dBase package. Slow index searches, index pointers that failed to 
move, or best of all - trashed index files from out of nowhere! When I got
a copy of Foxbase/+ to run as a speed upgrade from III+ I was surprised
(and quite pleasantly so) at how *well* it ran! Never mind that was a *lot*
faster, or that it had these neat extensions III+ didn't - it just plain 
did what the packaging SAID it would do.

And to me that's something worth waiting for. It'll take some convincing
to get me to try A-T dBase stuff again.

You can't litigate quality!

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|Timothy D. Kuehn					timk@egvideo          |
|TDK Consulting Services			        !watmath!egvideo!timk |
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wew@naucse.UUCP (Bill Wilson) (01/30/89)

>>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. 

I also agree with this sentiment.  If A-T would keep a superior product
on the market they would not have to worry about the clones.  I have
been dis-enchanted with A-T products for a while, although I did start
with dBASE II on a CP/M machine.

A-T, please work with your users and developers instead of fighting us!


-- 
Bill Wilson                          (Bitnet: ucc2wew@nauvm)
Northern AZ Univ
Flagstaff, AZ 86011
{These views are mine and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer}