John Hawkins gave an overview of xBase history at DevCon and he's seen most of it. You might be able to contact him at Advisor and see if he has some pointers.
Jay
>Hi,
>
>I'm planning to collect information to write a document and try to tell the complete history of FoxPro, while in short terms, from the start of Vulcan at JPLDIS, FoxBase, FoxPro until Visual FoxPro, nowadays.
>
>For that purpose I'm searching for sources to gather pieces of information, that will be latter consolidated and formatted.
>
>Got part of history's beginning (Vulcan and then dBase II) from Jeb Long's book
Visual Foxpro 3 Developer's Guide, and a timeline:
>
>1984 Fox Software releases FoxBASE, an inexpensive way to distribute dBASE applications.
>
>1986 FoxBASE+ is released with performance, stability and additional language features.
>
>1988 FoxBASE+ for the Macintosh is the first cross-platform xBase tool.
>
>1989 FoxPro 1.0 sports a GUI. The face of xBASE is changed forever.
>
>1991 FoxPro 2.0 Rushmore™ query technology allows for blazingly fast querying performance. FoxPro 2.0 also introduces a graphical Screen Builder and Report Builder and integrated SOL support.
>
>1992 Fox Software merges with Microsoft Corp.
>
>1993 FoxPro for Windows and FoxPro for Macintosh ship.
>
>1995 With 32-bit Visual FoxPro 3.0, FoxPro evolves from a procedural language to an object-oriented language . Visual FoxPro 3.0 introduces a database container, seamless client/server capabilities, support for ActiveX™ technologies, and OLE Automation.
>
>1996 Visual FoxPro 5.0 adds improved support for ActiveX, COM component creation, a radically new debugger, integration with the Visual SourceSafe™ version control system and the ability to create Visual FoxPro- based Web applications.
>
>1997 Visual FoxPro ships as part of Visual Studio 97.
>
>... (?)
>
>I invite all of you that find interest in collaborating in such a work to send me ANY information, or sources of information, that could be added or searched to write this history, as much detailed, the better, like names, dates, numbers, facts etc (I know there are even some anedoctes about Dr. Dave's negotiations with Microsoft as well, check at
http://fox.wikis.com/wc.dll?Wiki~DaveFulton).
>
>Also I ask for permission of those that have some text that could be used, to tell me about it and to let me make references to it.
>
>At the end (I hope there will be an end!) we'll have a
public domain paper (in downloadable format - maybe UT or Microsoft can host it) to anyone that wants it. There shall be a list of names to thank all people that contributed to accomplish that work.
>
>It will not be a work
I'll be doing, rather it will be a contribution from and to our community. I'll just collect and organize information and write the text. If you have any further ideas on how this task could be done, please tell about then!
>
>If you find it easier to email me information, fell free to send it to alvares@via-rs.net.
>
>Join!
>
>Fernando
>
>P.S. If there are legal considerations or other concerns about doing this kind of work, please let me know and help me, because I'm not aware of then. Thanks.
