This was written by my esteemed colleague Glenn Koster
in response to a post by Ed Berner:

>>Were the SIS and SAS applications ever finished?  Were they widely
>>used? What became of them?

>The long and short of it is - yes, they were finished (and marketed).
>However, in the early 80's HP decided to get out of the software
>business for software products that didn't directly affect their
>business.  As a result, they sold the source code - as is -
>to a number of companies.  The ones that come to mind are Carter-Schaefer
>(Houston), Pertaine Systems (Redwood City) and Ace Software (somewhere in
Ohio).

I would like to set the record straight with regard to
Pertaine Systems, Inc. (PSI) and SIS/SAS.

PSI never used SIS, but did incorporate SAS into its software offerings.
PSI attempted to purchase the rights to SAS from HP, but was advised by
HP Corporate Counsel that SIS/SAS had been abandoned, the source code
freely distributed to educational institutions and that we could do what
we wanted with it.

Here are some interesting historical anecdotes you might find interesting:

1. There might be a link somewhere between SIS/SAS and the current CSY GM
   Winston Prather. If so, I wonder if Winston has time to comment on this
:-)

2. We required our customers to order the HP SAS manual which was on the
   CPL. At one point the products were dropped from the CPL but I called
   the 1-800-whatever number to order documentation from HP. I ordered the
   part#, they said it was 'out of stock', but they would print some up
   since I was ordering one. Evidently they printed a batch of them because
   then the manual again was on the CPL and orderable by our customers. At
   one point we ordered the last 20 copies they had and were ever going to
   have.

3. The SIS/SAS manuals have sample screen shots and reports from the site
   where the system was developed. This school district in Wayne NJ
eventually
   purchased software from PSI for student administration and abandoned
their
   use of the original SIS/SAS software.

BTW - this discussion makes me feel old :-)

duane percox

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