“[…] Our company is so scared of data bases that it will not even create a group by that name, deemed “too emotional”! It ends up creating a group called “basic data.” The managers have taken six months to achieve this play on words. Things have moved fast in other areas, however: there is growing international demand for better software within our sister companies. I am sent to Holland to represent GLOBGAS-France at a meeting that also includes GLOBGAS-UK, Deutche-GLOBGAS, and other related organizations. The meeting lasts two days and concludes with an exceptionally fine dinner at an executive’s home in a suburb of Amsterdam. Our host goes around the table to ask each of up what we feel is the best investment the company can make in the computer field. The answer from each expert is “a generalized data-base system.” Our host looks very stern and there is silence.
Then he states, “I understand your needs, and the Group is aware of this requirement. But we are not in the software business. We are in the oil business.”
We bow our heads, as befits young and well-educated European engineers when the boss has spoken. But there is a young Texan GLOBGAS-US with us, and he feels no such constraint.
“Well, now,” he says, “down there in Houston we spend about sixty million bucks on programming each year. I reckon we’re in the software business.”
“If it’s a core business function – do it yourself, no matter what.”
— In Defense of Not-Invented-Here Syndrome, Joel Spolsky, 2001 (http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000007.html)
Also, this story from 1967 or 1968:
“[…] Our company is so scared of data bases that it will not even create a group by that name, deemed “too emotional”! It ends up creating a group called “basic data.” The managers have taken six months to achieve this play on words. Things have moved fast in other areas, however: there is growing international demand for better software within our sister companies. I am sent to Holland to represent GLOBGAS-France at a meeting that also includes GLOBGAS-UK, Deutche-GLOBGAS, and other related organizations. The meeting lasts two days and concludes with an exceptionally fine dinner at an executive’s home in a suburb of Amsterdam. Our host goes around the table to ask each of up what we feel is the best investment the company can make in the computer field. The answer from each expert is “a generalized data-base system.” Our host looks very stern and there is silence.
Then he states, “I understand your needs, and the Group is aware of this requirement. But we are not in the software business. We are in the oil business.”
We bow our heads, as befits young and well-educated European engineers when the boss has spoken. But there is a young Texan GLOBGAS-US with us, and he feels no such constraint.
“Well, now,” he says, “down there in Houston we spend about sixty million bucks on programming each year. I reckon we’re in the software business.”
— The Network Revolution¹, Jacques F. Vallee, 1982 (https://books.google.com/books?id=6f8VqnZaPQwC&pg=PA61)
① http://www.jacquesvallee.net/network_revolution.html