>Hi, Jay,
>
>Same here, I discovered dBase III in 1986, and then Fox a little over a year later, and the rest was history. dBase III was a very important product for many of our careers.
>
>In a sort of perverted way, Ashton-Tate's struggles and goof-ups in the late 1980's helped Fox. Many developers switched from dBase IV to Fox, and the crazy lawsuit became a "David vs Goliath" rallying point during the genesis of the Fox community.
>
>Kevin

Kevin;

I did some serious work with dBase II. dBase III was so much better. FoxBase was fun and FoxPro blew away anything that dBase could do.

Ashton Tate had grown into an octopus and would rather sue others rather than serve its customers. If you were a third party provider you had to pay Ashton Tate each year to sell your product, plus if you had a good product Ashton Tate would include it in its next release which put you out of business.

The war between Ashton Tate and FoxPro was not good for the industry. I was hired for a consulting position at Ashton Tate in San Jose, and that was just before the buy out by Borland. I like to tell people that I helped end Ashton Tate! Not really. :)

Borland was a blessing to the development community especially because of the FoxPro lawsuit. When the judge found out that the so called xBase (term used to avoid being sued by Ashton Tate) ok - dBase, came from the public domain, the case was thrown out!

I received a letter from Borland asking me if Ashton Tate had paid me, which they had. I think that was thoughtful and an indication of Borland caring about its business relationship with employees and the community.

Tom