Just in case you were so wrapped up in mid-October's Supreme Court confirmation hearings that you missed the rest of the news, be advised that the Justice Department granted approval for Borland's acquisition of Ashton-Tate. And even if you did read about it in your paper's business section, chances are the story was wrong: No less than the Wall Street Journal reported that the merger was official once the "basic features of Ashton-Tate's...database software [were] placed in the public domain." This would be big news if it were true; lamentably, it isn't.
Although the Justice Department did attach strings--in the terms of "consent decrees"--to the merger, those strings weren't tied to the public domain. The consent decrees stipulate that: 1. For a period of 10 years, Borland cannot enforce any dBase-related copyrights, including command languages, programming languages, file structures, command names, menu items, and menu command hierarchy; 2. Borland must seek prompt resolution of A-T's lawsuit against Fox Software.
Imagine, if you can, the pickle barrel Borland would be in if the Justice Department hadn't come up with door #1. Borland would be defending itself against Lotus, while, by virtue of acquiring A-T and its ongoing litigations, suing the pants off Fox for exactly the same thing. Borland's defense against Lotus is that systems, procedures, and methods of operations are not copyrightable. Ditto for Fox. I think they call this being on the horns of a dBase dilemma. As you might expect, Borland agreed posthaste to the government's proposal.
Let's face it, nothing was really resolved, at least in terms of UI copyright issues; I reckon we'll have to wait for the Lotus vs. Borland suit for enlightenment on those matters. However, third-party dBase/xBase developers do get a reprieve, putting them in a better position to compete with Borland and each other. And the entire market benefits.
Why, you might ask, is Borland so magnanimous with dBase copyrights and not with, say, Borland C++? (Now, wouldn't that be something!) Probably because the A-T dBase copyright claims are so flimsy that A-T likely couldn't win the suit against Fox. I'd add that Borland, to its credit, isn't known as a litigious company.
I wish I could say, as the WSJ did, that it's gratifying the "government's action reflects growing concern over consolidation in the...software industry, where a handful of companies already account for the bulk of the business." Unfortunately, this isn't the case either. When pondering mergers like that of Borland and A-T, the Justice Department considers the impact on the industry of a specific merger, not industry trends (such as consolidation).
It remains that software development is one of the few enterprises with a low barrier to entry and high likelihood of success. Just about the only barriers to entry in the software development industry are, in fact, intellectual property rights -- copyrights and patents. At least in this isolated case, these thorny issues have been put on hold, making possible greater third-party entry and livelihood, until they're sorted out.
In late October, the Justice Department filed with the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in San Francisco a competitive impact statement concerning the Borland/A-T consent decree and will be accepting comments for a period of 60 days. If you have anything to say about this, here's your chance. Contact the Justice Department for details; the docket number of United States vs. Borland International is C91-3666MHP.
One reason UIs for pen-based computers are covered in this issue is that, as a Xerox PARC researcher recently said, pens are where the UI action is and, as the September issue of Scientific American suggested, stylus-based devices will soon be everywhere. Let's hope, however, that this emerging segment of the industry isn't introduced with the same kind of bravado as the Momenta Computer, briefly described on page 18.
The Momenta Computer, a promising system with powerful features, was introduced at a lavishly financed and well-orchestrated launch to an overflowing Silicon Valley audience. However, we noticed a marked discrepancy between the very fast system performance at Monday's launch extravaganza and relatively slow performance at Tuesday's OOPSLA '91 conference in Phoenix. What we found out--and what company spokesmen failed to tell attendees at the launch--was that the display on the stage-size VGA projection screen was driven by a high-speed desktop machine, not the Momenta tablet the demo presenter appeared to be using. The reason Momenta didn't use its own machine, a PR representative later told us, was that the system doesn't have a VGA-out port for connecting to an external monitor, so they used the desktop machine and detachable digitizing tablet instead. Huh? Well, if you say so...
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