Please PM me with any information you may have.

Hello,
I am looking for the person or people that hold the source code and ownership to SuperBase. It is my understanding that the Man who owned Mr Hardware located in Central Islip, New York passed away some years ago. I don't know who owns it now. I would like to purchase the rights and source code and all software from a to z everything!! I have plans and owning that will be of great benefit to my business. There will be a great deal of investment in the software assuming I can get it, and just one factor of great interest is AmigaOS4. Please help me track down the owner/rights holder. Thanks you, MUCH


Please PM me with any information you may have.

Last edited by apsturk on 15-Jun-2016 at 11:32 PM.

@apsturk

Looking at Wikipedia they seem to be semi-active. No mention of the Amiga of course but here they are: http://www.superbase.com/

Not all of the pages work and it looks like it is a couple of years old with the exception of one recent entry - this month as it happens - but someone has had the same idea as yourself: http://www.superbase.com/official-superbase-purchase-press-release/

Last edited by -Sam- on 15-Jun-2016 at 11:34 PM.

_________________
Sam

@-Sam-

NO they no longer own the source code or the rights to SuperBase pro Amiga or classes PC any longer they sold it long, long ago to Mr. Hardware Computers! (the Amiga version) as they no longer wanted to develop it.

yes they (Super Base) the then new owners did sell it back in 2014 (again)

SuperBase is very different that what you remember it to be. It has long ago changed to something very different. Again SuperBase (Amiga) was sold almost 20 years ago to Mr. Hardware where it died so far...

sorry I should have put something in my first post so someone did not make that mistake.

Last edited by apsturk on 15-Jun-2016 at 11:47 PM.
Last edited by apsturk on 15-Jun-2016 at 11:47 PM.
Last edited by apsturk on 15-Jun-2016 at 11:45 PM.
Last edited by apsturk on 15-Jun-2016 at 11:44 PM.

@apsturk,

When I contacted them a few years ago they still owned it, Mr Hardware only had a license. They are willing to let someone work on it. They don't have anyone that can do it, apparently it has a lot of basic in there. The Amiga version is quite old now. I posted on AO at the time It will pull up on in a search.

Chris

It pulls up on a search right here from 2014. I also posted the response from them, here it is:

" This is the response I received from them.



"Thanks for the heads up. How many people would you say are currently involved/interested in a Superbase for the Amiga?

It is important to recognize that the Superbase 4 product for the AmigaOS only represents a fairly old version of Superbase,
with a basic form designer and a fairly limited version of BASIC as a programming language. Superbase moved on on the Windows
platform by implementing a banded report writer (graphical reports), a modern basic using SUBs and FUNCTIONs with event-based
programming, and later on an object-BASIC enhancement.

The current incarnation is a full rewrite that runs on Windows and Linux and which uses wxWidgets for its cross-platform GUI
components. We took a brief look and noted that wxWidgets has an AmigaOS port, but it was not clear how stable or complete that
port is.

For technical information about the current version of Superbase (Next Generation using SIMPOL), you can visit the SIMPOL
website at www.simpol.com."

Ciao, Neil "

Chris

@QuikSanz

Thank you I will check into that. as part of the press release from Mr. Hardware Computers it stats this.

"on April 29th 1996 Mr. Hardware Computers purchased all the rights to the Amiga version of SBace4Pro from Oxxi, Inc."


It is my understanding that the Amiga versions were sold off. I don't know, often what we read or hear turns out not to be true. Thank you and I will check it out for sure.

@apsturk,

Looked for the mail last night, too old. Took me a while to remember I posted it in plain sight! lol

Chris

@apsturk,
By the way, it's been a long time but I think the " Pro " version just included an invoicing system tied in.

Chris

@QuikSanz

Quote:

They don't have anyone that can do it, apparently it has a lot of basic in there.

I think they're talking about SBase's control and query language being a simple form of BASIC and how they've improved it, not what the source code is written in which is most likely a mix of C & ASM.

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@Severin

Interesting indeed. Well we need to start where they left off

Update!!

Problem solved I found what I was looking for and I working on a deal to take over!!!

Wish me luck in the negation

@apsturk

Great news - keep us updated.

_________________
Sam

@apsturk,

May even be able to port Simpol to OS4.1+.

@Severin

You are quite correct. Superbase and Superbase NG are both written primarily in C, with small amounts of C++ and Assembler.

The point made in the email from me that was displayed above, is that we would want to know if it is commercially worth our while to do a port, hence the questions about numbers of interested users.

Amiga Superbase Pro 4 (which eventually was renamed to SBase Pro 4) and Windows Superbase Pro 4, both in the 1.31 version in 1991, shared a common source code base.

In 1991 UK-based Precision Software was sold to Software Publishing Corporation (SPC) in California. At the time, version 1.31 was not yet released. After the release of the Windows and Amiga versions, SPC sold off all of the non-Windows versions of Superbase to Oxxi with the provision that to avoid confusion none of the future versions from them could be called Superbase. They settled for SBase.

The Windows version then got significant investment and advanced as a development tool quite rapidly, with the version 2 release coming in late 1992/early 1993.

In 1994, SPC sold Superbase (with a nearly finished version 3) to Computer Concepts Corporation (CCC), who formed Superbase Inc. They released version 3 (renamed Superbase 95) in December 1994 and got t right in March 1995. Due to management mistakes in their associated corporations, they stopped development of Superbase in April of 1995 and started searching for a buyer.

In April 1996, a small group of Superbase customers (including myself) bought Superbase from CCC and set up shop in the UK again, calling their organization Superbase Developers plc. That is when I took over as head of development.

We released several interim release of Superbase culminating with Superbase Classic in 2003. We also knew going in that Superbase 95 (the product we had at the time) would need a major rewrite to move even to Win32. By the time we were ready to do that, in 2000, we decided to do a complete rewrite from the ground up, with a view to supporting multiple platforms again.

We had a much smaller team, so the development of a comparable (and in many ways superior) product, was going to take time, considering the roughly 200+ programmer years in Superbase Classic.

In April 2006, due to disagreements about the correct way forward at a management level, the still developing Superbase NG product and its source code and SIMPOL programming language were sold to a start-up company that eventually renamed itself to Simpol Limited. The 2 co-creators of SIMPOL moved to the new company.

In 2010, Superbase Developers plc was liquidated and the ownership of its intellectual property were sold to Papatuo Holdings Ltd.

As a result of the difficult trading environment following on from the financial crisis in 2008, in late 2013 Simpol Limited was liquidated. The intellectual property of Simpol Limited was also acquired by Papatuo Holdings Ltd, and I joined them to continue development of SIMPOL, soon to be renamed Superbase NG, now that all of the intellectual property was back in one company.

This year we released Superbase NG 2.0, a direct progression from the SIMPOL Professional 1.83 release that came out in 2014.

The current release has an IDE that is Windows-specific (but can run in WINE on Linux). Programs written in SIMPOL and using our database can run on Windows 32 and 64-bit and Linux 32-bit and 64-bit (the 64-bit native Linux support is not yet released, nor do we have native 64-bit Windows support yet). We have internally also a version that runs on the Raspberry Pi, with plans to port to Android in the foreseeable future.

The programming environment and database engine of the latest release are a considerable advance over what was available in SBase4 Pro on the Amiga. It would be conceivable that a port to Amiga OS4.x would be less labor intensive and less expensive than one might think, and the resulting product would have all of the up-to-date features that we supply, including a fully object-oriented programming language, support for Unicode, fast and powerful database engine, rapid application development tools, etc. What will be the biggest challenge would be getting an IDE running on the Amiga platform. The most sensible approach (which we have also been considering for some time), might be to supply a plug-in to Eclipse as a cross-platform IDE that supports editing and debugging SIMPOL programs.

We are perfectly willing to discuss this with interested parties.

@neilr

Quote:

support for Unicode, fast and powerful database engine, rapid application development tools,

Cool, I done some work to make UTF8 easier to work with, on AmigaOS4. If you wonted to render UTF8 string you need draw etch glyph one by one, my UTF8.libary contains draw functions to draw full UTF8 text strings.

Sure you might be able to do the same with FreeType or something not so native to AmigaOS.

Quote:

etc. What will be the biggest challenge would be getting an IDE running on the Amiga platform.

You do not need a IDE to compile an C/C++ program; you need a Makefile and a C compiler.
its not a big deal.

And possibly a good text editor.
Most advanced is gooled or cubiced, there is also CodeBench.

Notepad on AmigaOS4.1 is not too bad, provided line numbers, you can easily jump to line with the error and so on, but it is a text editor not a IDE, not color highlighting etc.

I read some rumors it's possible to compile C64 programs using Virtual Studio on windows. But I think not practical to compile something on a different OS, and test it on another. in any case you need to compile a AmigaOS4.1 cross compiler for windows.

WinUAE can provide AmigaOS4.1 under windows, the problem will be to move compiled files to WinUAE. WinUAE also runs well on Linux thanks to Wine. (I read somewhere that someone made ISO files.)

Quote:

The most sensible approach (which we have also been considering for some time), might be to supply a plug-in to Eclipse as a cross-platform IDE that supports editing and debugging SIMPOL programs.

Eclipse is Jave based. if you need Java then that’s a show stopper, we have only an extremely simple Java implementation, most of the important classes are missing. We can't at this time get Eclipse running.

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@NutsAboutAmiga

Quote:

Cool, I done some work to make UTF8 easier to work with, on AmigaOS4. If you wonted to render UTF8 string you need draw etch glyph one by one, my UTF8.libary contains draw functions to draw full UTF8 text strings. Sure you might be able to do the same with FreeType or something not so native to AmigaOS.

We wouldn't be dealing with the actual rendering, that would be part of the wxWidgets library support. It may be that we would have to enhance what is already there in the wxWidgets port.

Quote:

You do not need a IDE to compile an C/C++ program; you need a Makefile and a C compiler.

No, we need an IDE for development in our own programming language, SIMPOL. On Windows we offer a full IDE with syntax highlighting, source-level debugging, template completion, and Intellisense-style features for elements in our language, components, and compiled code.

I already have WinUAE (I also have an Amiga 1000 and Amiga 2000 hiding up in my garage loft ) .

Quote:

Eclipse is Jave based. if you need Java then that’s a show stopper, we have only an extremely simple Java implementation, most of the important classes are missing. We can't at this time get Eclipse running.

This doesn't have to be Eclipse, but we would need some way to provide a development environment for SIMPOL developers. If there is a different standard IDE with plug-in support, we could write one to that, for example. Or we could craft one from scratch using wxWidgets and wxScintilla, if that stuff will compile on the Amiga OS.

Last edited by neilr on 17-Jun-2016 at 07:32 PM.
Last edited by neilr on 17-Jun-2016 at 07:31 PM.

@neilr

Quote:

We wouldn't be dealing with the actual rendering, that would be part of the wxWidgets library support. It may be that we would have to enhance what is already there in the wxWidgets port.

http://wxwidget-aos.cvs.sourceforge.net/viewvc/wxwidget-aos/wxBase/src/amiga/

Well it looks old 10 / 8 years.
Good review, but has no files to download, I don't think it was ever completed.

http://www.amigabounty.net/?function=viewproject&projectid=30

Yes it was never complained.
700 EUR was collected for the port.

http://www.amigabounty.net/?function=viewhistory&projectid=30&historyid=38

It looks like his computer stopped working.

We have a reticent QT port, that might be a better choice.

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@NutsAboutAmiga

Wxwidget port was not completed but the author should still have the source if someone wants to restart from that. If so, tell me and I'll ask him.

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@NutsAboutAmiga

The QT port looks like it might be far more usable, but it still has the same problem it had when I looked at it in 2003.

Namely, to use it for our widgets, since we produce a development tool and not an end-user program, would require every single one of our customers who develop software to buy a Qt license.

That license price looks to be about 3000 Euros for single OS desktop license. Considering we sell Superbase NG for 479 Euros, it would be ridiculous for our customers on the Amiga OS to be forced to buy a license that is more than 6 times the price of our entire product, just so they can have desktop widgets.

It might be possible to do a deal with them so we could buy a license, do the development, and then allow our customers to use the LGPL license if that is appropriate and buy a commercial one if that is appropriate, don't know if that would fly though.

@neilr

Welcome!