OK so do you want the real story? The genius behind dBase was Wayne Ratliff. When George Tate died of a heart attack on 1984 at age 39 the company's new CEO was Ed Esber.
While Tate had a productive relationship with Ratliff and realized he was important to the companies success. Ed Esber fought with Ratliff. He famously told dBase's inventor that his contributions to the company were no important to the success of Ashton-Tate than the guy on the loading dock.
Ratliff quit and started Migent to compete against Ashton-Tate. Esber sued the young company over appropriation of trade secrets. You can trace the company's decline from this point. Ratliff introduced an innovative client server database called Emerald Bay but lacked the marketing chops to succeed. SQL was beginning to take off and when Microsoft introduced Access and made it easily accessible to the same customer base that dBase targeted it was the death knell.
While Tate had a productive relationship with Ratliff and realized he was important to the companies success. Ed Esber fought with Ratliff. He famously told dBase's inventor that his contributions to the company were no important to the success of Ashton-Tate than the guy on the loading dock.
Ratliff quit and started Migent to compete against Ashton-Tate. Esber sued the young company over appropriation of trade secrets. You can trace the company's decline from this point. Ratliff introduced an innovative client server database called Emerald Bay but lacked the marketing chops to succeed. SQL was beginning to take off and when Microsoft introduced Access and made it easily accessible to the same customer base that dBase targeted it was the death knell.