For me, the only thing I truly remember about Borland is Philippe Kahn (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippe_Kahn). Kahn is a giant: supreme intelligence, accomplished musician, worldwide competitive sailor. He is also a big and tall man. He is also the person who sent the first photo via a telephone.
I first met him in 95 when I invited him to speak at a Wharton meeting. His vision of the internet blew me away. Shortly after meeting with him I quit my job to start one of the dotcom companies.
Like a lot of companies ran by Founders, Borland had a face, for me it was Kahn.
I have heard a different story (but from Kahn's side): that the board did not back him up when he presented his internet strategy. He left after that, arguing that the board did not have the vision.
Kahn was a poor visionary overall. He didn’t have a vision of the web at all. His vision— articulated to us in 93 and 94 was “client/server.” Close, but really not the same thing.
He drove constant reorgs that followed the pattern of: centralize then decentralize then centralize then decentralize… He bought Ashton Tate, which was a big mistake.
I don’t think Kahn was good at leading a big company, and it seemed to me and my friends there at the time that he was floundering.
> [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"?
