Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!egvideo!timk
From: timk@egvideo.UUCP (Tim Kuehn)
Newsgroups: comp.databases
Subject: who 'owns' the dBase Language (was Re: dBASE II-III+ functionality)
Summary: Some history is in order here
Message-ID: <1914@egvideo.UUCP>
Date: 4 Feb 89 05:00:00 GMT
References: <19695@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> <6@dbase.UUCP>
Reply-To: timk@egvideo.UUCP (Tim Kuehn)
Organization: A Box in the Basement, Kitchener, ON
Lines: 38

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). 


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