Jet Propulsion Laboratory Display Information System: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 17:42, 2 October 2007

Revision as of 00:35, 9 December 2007

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In late 1980, George Tate, of [[Ashton-Tate]], entered into a marketing agreement with Wayne Ratliff. Vulcan was renamed to dBase, and the price was raised from $50 to $695, and the software quickly became a huge success.

According to the http://www.foxprohistory.comorg/ site, JPLDIS was the reason why Aston-Tate lost a lawsuit against FoxPro and SCO FoxPro over copyrights used by FoxPro that were claimed to belong to Ashton-Tate and the dBase product. In December 11, 1990, Judge Hatter issued an order invalidating Ashton-Tate's copyrights in its own dBASE products.

That ruling was based on a legal doctrine known as "unclean hands". Judge Hatter explained that Ashton-Tate knew that the dBase program development was based on JPLDIS, and that fact was kept hidden that from the Copyright Office. More on this can be found at http://www.foxprohistory.org/ashton_sues_fox.htm .