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> [Philippe Khan] bought Ashton Tate, which was a big mistake.

Was it really? It brought in dBase to make simple desktop (as opposed to client-server) database apps super-easy to develop in Delphi, and IIRC Interbase to make client-server DB apps easy and cheap todeploy (thanks to the license terms of the CS version) too. I always thought had they stuck to that, and not veered into .NET and that whole weird ALM software pivot, they could have done much better.

I don't know how much you are at liberty to tell, but if there is anything more you can say about it: Why was the Ashton-Tate acquisition a "big mistake"?



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