[cctalk] Re: Altair BASIC Source Code released

On Thu, 2025-04-03 at 10:43 -0400, Murray McCullough via cctalk wrote: In 1972 on Univac 1108 at JPL, I developed an interactive numerical math package, similar to but much smaller than Matlab, called Engineer's Calculator Language or ECL. ECL was expanded by Phil Roberts and became Quick, which was used for spacecraft trajectory planning. Jack Hatfield used the language-processing and memory-management infrastructure I developed for a project called JPL Management Information System or JPLMIS, based on a "network" (not internet) database organization (relational databases and SQL hadn't yet been invented). Jack Hatfield resigned when his name was omitted from the user guide and management refused to correct it. Jeb Long continued that project and it became Data Information System or JPLDIS Jeb was interested in microcomputers, and had an Altair 8800 in his office. After a meeting of the JPL microcomputer club, he gave the source code to Wayne Ratliff, who hand-compiled about a quarter of the original Fortran code to 8080 assembler and called it Vulcan. He took it to George Tate, who teamed up with Hal Lashlee to form Ashton- Tate (there was never any Ashton). Ashton-Tate couldn't sell it as Vulcan because Harris already had an OS of that name, so they changed it to dBase, and later dBase II. Foxpro was an independent clone of it. Ratliff gets public credit for my work, Jack Hatfield's work, and Jeb Long's work. But at least Jeb got 1/16 of retail for every dBase sold — and retired before age 40.