the history of Forth

[h***@gmail.com]

This is a response to a post in this thread:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/comp.lang.forth/BDkprcLYfGg

I started a new thread because that thread
(discussing the concept of smudging CODE definitions)
is very novice-level and uninteresting.

I think most apps used EMPTY to clean out an aborted compile. It
was more reliable than FORGET which was buggy in Fig-Forth.

I'm surprised by that. fig-FORTH FORGET wasn't buggy for very
long. fig-FORTH itself was published in mid-1979, and dave Kilbridge's
fix for FORGET was written at end '79 and published in FORTH
Dimensions March 1981. Maybe people didn't update for a long time.
Andrew.

Who knew. Responding to a letter in FD asking why Fig wasn't issuing
bug fixes they said it was now the responsibility of vendors. They
saw themselves in the new role of facilitating standards. The final
fig-6502 listing didn't even include fixes that had made it into the
Fig Installation Manual.

According to Jeff Fox, Elizabeth Rather wanted to sue Fig because
Fig had stolen MicroForth (proprietary to Forth Inc.) and made it
public --- this was blatant pirating --- the lawsuit would have worked.
This resulted in a major disagreement between Elizabeth Rather and
Charles Moore. He was willing to talk it over with Fig and make a deal.
He did this, and the deal was that Fig would just stick with FigForth
that they already had, but they wouldn't upgrade FigForth because
that would be competition against Forth Inc.. This deal is why FigForth
never got upgraded, not even with bug fixes --- it stayed static
forever and continued to be of educational value and nothing more.
Some bug-fixes and minor feature upgrades got published in
"Forth Dimensions" and/or passed around, but Fig themselves didn't
provide any bug-fixes or upgrades, nor endorse any PD ones available.

Charles Moore made this deal because he felt confident that
his future Forth systems would be superior enough to MicroForth/FigForth
that they would be worth commercially viable. He was okay the rise
of a Forth community that didn't necessarily buy Forth Inc. products
because he felt confident that he could always come out with new
Forth systems that would be commercially viable in the sense that
they were technically superior to any Forth system that anybody else had.
Elizabeth Rather was adamantly opposed to the rise of a Forth community
that didn't necessarily buy Forth Inc. products. She wanted the Forth
language to be proprietary to Forth Inc. and to require (with lawsuits)
every Forth programmer to buy a Forth system from Forth Inc., and
nobody could be a Forth programmer without paying her for the privilege.

This disagreement between Charles Moore and Elizabeth Rather was the
reason why Charles Moore left Forth Inc.. After Charles Moore left,
Elizabeth Rather didn't have any real programmers employed at Forth Inc.
so all she could do was employ maintenance programmers whose job was to
keep Charles Moore's old Forth systems going (like keeping a corpse warm
so that appears to still be alive), but there was no more innovation.

Multiple companies came out with Forth systems for sale.
Elizabeth Rather couldn't sue them for stealing Forth Inc.'s
"look and feel" because Charles Moore was the inventor of Forth
so he owned any "look and feel" that Forth had. This was the era
of Apple's "look and feel" lawsuit, so the inventor of Forth could
have realistically sued Forth system providers for stealing his ideas
(Forth was full of ideas that Charles Moore had thought up, that had
never been thought of previously). Charles Moore continued
to decline to hit Forthers with lawsuits --- he liked Forthers or,
at least, he didn't hate them the way Elizabeth Rather hated them.
This continues today --- Charles Moore doesn't hate Forthers, but
there is no evidence to indicate that he particularly likes Forthers
either --- he seems to consider us to be a gaggle of idiot wanna-bees
who continue to fail badly at innovation, just like in the 1970s.

LMI became the dominant Forth system provider of the late 1980s
and early 1990s. The quality level of UR/Forth was really superior
to anything that any other Forth provider offered. Forth Inc.'s
quality level was abysmal --- many public-domain Forth systems
were of higher quality. In those days, being a Forth programmer
mostly meant having familiarity with UR/Forth --- when I interviewed
for the job at Testra, the entire interview involved showing
UR/Forth code that I had written (my 65c02 cross-compiler) and
answering questions about the internal workings of UR/Forth.
Elizabeth Rather wasn't ready to surrender though!
Elizabeth Rather came up with the clever trick of developing the
ANS-Forth Standard primarily for the purpose of making UR/Forth
non-standard and forcing all Forthers to get on their knees to
beg her to allow them to call themselves Forthers. That worked!

Forth Inc.'s quality level was still abysmal --- and it still is!
It is not about quality --- it is about cutting throats.
This is why I describe Forth today as being similar to the Donner Party.

I can remember in 1984 that Forth was popular. Finding Forthers was easy;
I just rode my bike around Isla Vista near the college campus and
looked for cars with a bumper stick that said: "Forth [heart] if honk then."
I said at the time that Forth-83 had problems, with PAD being especially
dumb (I knew that passing data between functions in global variables was dumb
because this was the primary problem with line-number BASIC). I was told
that everybody knew Forth-83 was weak, but that a viable Forth standard
was in the works and would soon be available, and this would make Forth
respectable and competitive with C. After ANS-Forth came out one decade
later (very late!), ANS-Forth was found to be full of ambiguity and hence
worse than Forth-83 rather than better. This killed Forth.
Essentially all of the Forthers disappeared. Where did they go?
Elizabeth Rather killed them and ate them --- a modern-day Lewis Keseburg!

[Lars Brinkhoff]

Post by h***@gmail.com
I just rode my bike around Isla Vista near the college campus and
looked for cars with a bumper stick that said: "Forth [heart] if honk then."

Ah, an early example of emoji Forth.

[dxforth]

Post by h***@gmail.com
...
According to Jeff Fox, Elizabeth Rather wanted to sue Fig because
Fig had stolen MicroForth (proprietary to Forth Inc.) and made it
public --- this was blatant pirating --- the lawsuit would have worked.

Nobody will know. By that time forth had been distributed for free
through the NRAO and modified by others from which Fig is known to
have borrowed. Forth Inc declined to do a 6502 Forth for Ragsdale
leaving it open to others. What exactly was stolen that wasn't already
in the public domain? If a deal was done with Fig to quash low-cost
forths it was too late as LMI was selling ready-to-use Fig-Forth using
OS files for only $40 more than a DIY Fig listing.

[h***@gmail.com]

Post by dxforth

Post by h***@gmail.com
...
According to Jeff Fox, Elizabeth Rather wanted to sue Fig because
Fig had stolen MicroForth (proprietary to Forth Inc.) and made it
public --- this was blatant pirating --- the lawsuit would have worked.

Nobody will know. By that time forth had been distributed for free
through the NRAO and modified by others from which Fig is known to
have borrowed. Forth Inc declined to do a 6502 Forth for Ragsdale
leaving it open to others. What exactly was stolen that wasn't already
in the public domain? If a deal was done with Fig to quash low-cost
forths it was too late as LMI was selling ready-to-use Fig-Forth using
OS files for only $40 more than a DIY Fig listing.

DXForth asks:
"What exactly was stolen that wasn't already in the public domain?"

MicroForth was actually a commercial product.
Forth Inc. never put it in the public domain.
The fact that the source-code got distributed for free (as in free beer)
is only illegal if the person distributing it signed an NDA.
Most likely, Forth Inc. wasn't strict about getting everybody
who had access to the source-code to sign an NDA.
Just because it has been distributed however, doesn't mean
that it is public-domain --- it is still the property of Forth Inc..
So, a lawsuit against Fig would have almost certainly succeeded.
Elizabeth Rather knew this and Charles Moore knew it too.
The difference, as I described, is that Charles Moore felt confident
that he would always be ahead of everybody else technically.

Here is a real-world example:
A woman told me about how she parked her car at a Circle-K
with the keys in it and the engine running while she made a phone call
from a pay-phone (this was in the 1990s when pay-phones still existed).
A homeless man jumped into the car and drove away with it.
She chased him on foot, but he got away. She reported the car stolen.
Weeks later the police found the car with the homeless man sleeping in it.
They did not arrest him because he said that the woman had given him
the keys and had given him permission to borrow the car. There was no
evidence that the car had been stolen (such as it being hot-wired).
The police let him go, but they did confiscate the car and impound it.
Sometime later they told the woman that they had her car. She went to the
impound lot and paid a fee (IIRC about $200) and got the car back.
The homeless man had been using the backseat as a toilet,
so the car needed some major cleaning, but she got it back which was
worthwhile because she couldn't afford to buy another car.

So, a lawsuit from Forth Inc. against Fig would have worked in the
sense that Fig would have been given a cease-and-desist order
(similar to the homeless man being told to give the car back).
It would not have worked in the sense that Fig could have been fined
or jailed for theft. Or maybe it would have --- Forth Inc. could claim
that Fig had prevented Forth Inc. from making money (similar to if
somebody steals a plumber's truck and prevents him from doing his job,
this is considered to be theft even if the thief gives the truck back).
For the woman to sue a homeless man in civil court would be ridiculous
because he doesn't have any money. Similarly, nobody at Fig had any
money, so it wouldn't have been financially worthwhile for Forth Inc.
to sue Fig in civil court. The best that Forth Inc. could hope to do
was to squash the budding Forth community, which Charles Moore didn't
want to do. Later on, LMI did have money, so LMI would have been a
worthwhile target for a look-and-feel lawsuit --- but Charles Moore
left Forth Inc. in 1982 at a time when LMI was either very small or
didn't exist yet --- a decade later when LMI was the dominant vendor
of commercial Forth systems, it was too late to go legal on them.

So, everybody in the Forth community (thousands in the early 1990s)
snuck in through a legal loophole. Woo hoo!
Elizabeth Rather got her revenge though! When ANS-Forth came out,
everybody in the Forth community was required to brown-nose her or
they would be denounced as "non-standard" (an synonym for "damned").
At this time the size of the Forth community plummeted as there was
a mass exodus of Forthers switching over to C, and the size of the
Forth community has steadily decreased over the years.
Forth-200x boosted the size of the Forth community because Forth-200x
attracted a lot of non-programmers who enjoy pretending to be
big experts in a subject they know nothing about --- so the size of
the Forth community went up, but the average I.Q. plummeted.

So, if you want to spend years debating recognizers, and then write
your own recognizer in the hope that your meme will go viral and it
will become popular, then Forth-200x is for you!
If you are totally okay with Anton Ertl and Bernd Paysan lying about
the rquotations, saying they don't work, then Forth-200x is for you!
If you have a three-digit I.Q. and you are honest however,
and you want to save Forth, then jump to this thread:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/comp.lang.forth/S6GsWXapUAs%5B1-25%5D
Make a contribution --- something other than:
* promoting dynamic-OOP and/or GC --- this has nothing to do with Forth
* debating screen files versus sequential files --- the solution
(support both) is so obvious as to barely be worth mentioning

[dxforth]

Post by h***@gmail.com
...
"What exactly was stolen that wasn't already in the public domain?"
MicroForth was actually a commercial product.

Kitt Peak Forth wasn't. Forth technology was in the public domain
and in places such as Utrecht university with whom Ragsdale was in
contact. Short of FIG making some sort of admission, I neither see
nor presume a direct link between FIG-Forth and MicroForth. That
would be for a plaintiff to establish.

[h***@gmail.com]

Post by dxforth

Post by h***@gmail.com
...
"What exactly was stolen that wasn't already in the public domain?"
MicroForth was actually a commercial product.

Kitt Peak Forth wasn't. Forth technology was in the public domain
and in places such as Utrecht university with whom Ragsdale was in
contact. Short of FIG making some sort of admission, I neither see
nor presume a direct link between FIG-Forth and MicroForth. That
would be for a plaintiff to establish.

I can't really comment further on whether this lawsuit would have
succeeded or not:
* I don't have access to any pertinent documents, such as NDAs.
* I'm not a lawyer.
* I don't remember the 1970s very well (I was in elementary school),
so I don't know what the legal climate was like.

Ultimately though, Charles Moore invented Forth, and Elizabeth Rather
did not invent anything nor make any positive contribution,
so it is Charles Moore's call if he wants to sue us for stealing
his look-and-feel or not.

On a related note, I never signed any NDA at Testra in regard to
the MiniForth/RACE processor.
When I visited however, Tom Hart asked: "What is the MiniForth?"
He only remembers the RACE which was the MiniForth upgraded to run
on an FPGA chip, although still compatible enough to use MFX.

[a***@littlepinkcloud.invalid]

Short of FIG making some sort of admission, I neither see nor
presume a direct link between FIG-Forth and MicroForth.

It's history.

Bill Ragsdale, a successful Bay Area security system manufacturer,
became aware of the benefits of microFORTH, and in 1978 asked FORTH,
Inc. to produce a version of microFORTH for the 6502. FORTH,
Inc. declined, seeing much less market demand for microFORTH on the
6502 than the more popular 8080, Z80 and 6800 CPUs.

Ragsdale then looked for someone with the knowledge of microFORTH
and intimate familiarity with the 6502 to port a version of
microFORTH to the 6502. He found Maj. Robert Selzer, who had used
microFORTH for an AMI 6800 development system on an Army project and
was privately developing a standalone editor/assembler/linker
package for the 6502. Selzer wrote a 6502 Forth assembler, and used
the Army’s microFORTH metacompiler to target compile the first 6502
stand-alone Forth for the Jolt single board computer.

Andrew.

[dxforth]

Post by a***@littlepinkcloud.invalid

Short of FIG making some sort of admission, I neither see nor
presume a direct link between FIG-Forth and MicroForth.

It's history.
Bill Ragsdale, a successful Bay Area security system manufacturer,
became aware of the benefits of microFORTH, and in 1978 asked FORTH,
Inc. to produce a version of microFORTH for the 6502. FORTH,
Inc. declined, seeing much less market demand for microFORTH on the
6502 than the more popular 8080, Z80 and 6800 CPUs.
Ragsdale then looked for someone with the knowledge of microFORTH
and intimate familiarity with the 6502 to port a version of
microFORTH to the 6502. He found Maj. Robert Selzer, who had used
microFORTH for an AMI 6800 development system on an Army project and
was privately developing a standalone editor/assembler/linker
package for the 6502. Selzer wrote a 6502 Forth assembler, and used
the Army’s microFORTH metacompiler to target compile the first 6502
stand-alone Forth for the Jolt single board computer.
Andrew.

History according to Forth Inc who appear to be taking credit for
the mass popularity of Forth that ensued :) According to Ragsdale:

"the first microcomputer implementation of Forth was made available
for the Pet computer. Forth Dimensions immediately started getting
letters telling us how terrible the product was [...] That put us in
worried mode. Here was a vendor proclaiming loud and clear that he
was selling a Forth system, which was very poor, for personal computer
use. We had contact, by that time, with Elizabeth Rather from FORTH,
Inc. We queried their future role, would they have Forth for the Apple
and the Pet, would they support personal computers? She very clearly
stated, “absolutely not,” that was not their mission and they would
not support personal computer versions."

[a***@littlepinkcloud.invalid]

Post by dxforth

Post by a***@littlepinkcloud.invalid

Short of FIG making some sort of admission, I neither see nor
presume a direct link between FIG-Forth and MicroForth.

It's history.
Bill Ragsdale, a successful Bay Area security system manufacturer,
became aware of the benefits of microFORTH, and in 1978 asked FORTH,
Inc. to produce a version of microFORTH for the 6502. FORTH,
Inc. declined, seeing much less market demand for microFORTH on the
6502 than the more popular 8080, Z80 and 6800 CPUs.
Ragsdale then looked for someone with the knowledge of microFORTH
and intimate familiarity with the 6502 to port a version of
microFORTH to the 6502. He found Maj. Robert Selzer, who had used
microFORTH for an AMI 6800 development system on an Army project and
was privately developing a standalone editor/assembler/linker
package for the 6502. Selzer wrote a 6502 Forth assembler, and used
the Army’s microFORTH metacompiler to target compile the first 6502
stand-alone Forth for the Jolt single board computer.

History according to Forth Inc who appear to be taking credit for
the mass popularity of Forth that ensued :)

Why bother? Given that they were responsible for Forth itself, that
would be hard to avoid.

Post by dxforth
"the first microcomputer implementation of Forth was made available
for the Pet computer. Forth Dimensions immediately started getting
letters telling us how terrible the product was [...] That put us in
worried mode. Here was a vendor proclaiming loud and clear that he
was selling a Forth system, which was very poor, for personal
computer use. We had contact, by that time, with Elizabeth Rather
from FORTH, Inc. We queried their future role, would they have Forth
for the Apple and the Pet, would they support personal computers?
She very clearly stated, “absolutely not,” that was not their
mission and they would not support personal computer versions."

That does not really seem to contradict the quoted text I posted. It
certainly does not address the issue of the direct link between
fig-FORTH and microFORTH.

Anyway, you've seen it now. I'm surprised that you haven't seen it
before.

Andrew.

[h***@gmail.com]

0> > History according to Forth Inc who appear to be taking credit for

Post by a***@littlepinkcloud.invalid

Post by dxforth
the mass popularity of Forth that ensued :)

Why bother? Given that they were responsible for Forth itself, that
would be hard to avoid.

They??? LOL
Forth was created by Charles Moore.
There was no "they" involved in the creation of Forth.

It was mostly LMI that deserves credit for the mass popularity of Forth.
UR/Forth was the primary commercial Forth system.
PolyForth and FigForth were both toy systems --- there were several
Forth systems (either PD or low-cost shareware) that were superior.

Andrew Haley taught the novice-class at Forth Inc. --- that is a job
for a salesman, not a programmer --- he is just pretending that
he was part of a team of programmers at Forth Inc. who created Forth.
There was no team of programmers --- there was just Charles Moore
programming on his own.

[dxforth]

Post by h***@gmail.com
0> > History according to Forth Inc who appear to be taking credit for

Post by a***@littlepinkcloud.invalid

Post by dxforth
the mass popularity of Forth that ensued :)

Why bother? Given that they were responsible for Forth itself, that
would be hard to avoid.

They??? LOL
Forth was created by Charles Moore.
There was no "they" involved in the creation of Forth.
It was mostly LMI that deserves credit for the mass popularity of Forth.

This would be like Unix stepping forward saying it was responsible
for Linux.

Post by h***@gmail.com
UR/Forth was the primary commercial Forth system.
PolyForth and FigForth were both toy systems --- there were several
Forth systems (either PD or low-cost shareware) that were superior.
Andrew Haley taught the novice-class at Forth Inc. --- that is a job
for a salesman, not a programmer --- he is just pretending that
he was part of a team of programmers at Forth Inc. who created Forth.
There was no team of programmers --- there was just Charles Moore
programming on his own.

[h***@gmail.com]

Post by dxforth

Post by h***@gmail.com
0> > History according to Forth Inc who appear to be taking credit for

Post by a***@littlepinkcloud.invalid

Post by dxforth
the mass popularity of Forth that ensued :)

Why bother? Given that they were responsible for Forth itself, that
would be hard to avoid.

They??? LOL
Forth was created by Charles Moore.
There was no "they" involved in the creation of Forth.
It was mostly LMI that deserves credit for the mass popularity of Forth.

This would be like Unix stepping forward saying it was responsible
for Linux.

That doesn't make any sense whatsoever.
Nothing came after UR/Forth --- there was no mass popularity of Forth
after LMI got killed --- there was a mass exodus of Forther to C.

[dxforth]

Post by h***@gmail.com

Post by dxforth

Post by h***@gmail.com
...
It was mostly LMI that deserves credit for the mass popularity of Forth.

This would be like Unix stepping forward saying it was responsible
for Linux.

That doesn't make any sense whatsoever.
Nothing came after UR/Forth --- there was no mass popularity of Forth
after LMI got killed --- there was a mass exodus of Forther to C.

When was LMI massively popular? Did it support Apple, Commodore,
Sinclair etc as many Fig-Forth vendors did? If LMI had a following
it was at the top end of the market who were happy to spend $$$ on
cross-compilers and such.

[h***@gmail.com]

Post by dxforth

Post by h***@gmail.com

Post by dxforth

Post by h***@gmail.com
...
It was mostly LMI that deserves credit for the mass popularity of Forth.

This would be like Unix stepping forward saying it was responsible
for Linux.

That doesn't make any sense whatsoever.
Nothing came after UR/Forth --- there was no mass popularity of Forth
after LMI got killed --- there was a mass exodus of Forther to C.

When was LMI massively popular? Did it support Apple, Commodore,
Sinclair etc as many Fig-Forth vendors did? If LMI had a following
it was at the top end of the market who were happy to spend $$$ on
cross-compilers and such.

Apple, Commodore and (especially) the Timex Sinclair were hobbyist
computers --- MS-DOS was for commercial software.

Ironically, the C64 routinely beat the IBM-PC in speed tests.
MS-DOS became the standard for commercial software because it had
the backing of IBM that was a big name in those days, and because
it could address as much as 640K, which was 10* what the C64 had.
The IBM-PC only had 128K and an 8088, which was pretty wimpy,
but it did have potential that the 6502 series no longer had
(a floating-point coprocessor, for example).

As for the LMI cross-compilers, they were popular for micro-controllers.
Testra used the LMI cross-compiler for their 80c320 motion-control board.
I don't know anything about LMI cross-compilers though --- I wrote my own;
MFX for the MiniForth was written in UR/Forth.
It wouldn't have been possible in PolyForth, FigForth, F83, FPC
or any other hobbyist Forth system.

[dxforth]

Post by h***@gmail.com

Post by dxforth

Post by h***@gmail.com

Post by dxforth

Post by h***@gmail.com
...
It was mostly LMI that deserves credit for the mass popularity of Forth.

This would be like Unix stepping forward saying it was responsible
for Linux.

That doesn't make any sense whatsoever.
Nothing came after UR/Forth --- there was no mass popularity of Forth
after LMI got killed --- there was a mass exodus of Forther to C.

When was LMI massively popular? Did it support Apple, Commodore,
Sinclair etc as many Fig-Forth vendors did? If LMI had a following
it was at the top end of the market who were happy to spend $$$ on
cross-compilers and such.

Apple, Commodore and (especially) the Timex Sinclair were hobbyist
computers --- MS-DOS was for commercial software.
Ironically, the C64 routinely beat the IBM-PC in speed tests.
MS-DOS became the standard for commercial software because it had
the backing of IBM that was a big name in those days, and because
it could address as much as 640K, which was 10* what the C64 had.
The IBM-PC only had 128K and an 8088, which was pretty wimpy,
but it did have potential that the 6502 series no longer had
(a floating-point coprocessor, for example).
As for the LMI cross-compilers, they were popular for micro-controllers.
Testra used the LMI cross-compiler for their 80c320 motion-control board.
I don't know anything about LMI cross-compilers though --- I wrote my own;
MFX for the MiniForth was written in UR/Forth.
It wouldn't have been possible in PolyForth, FigForth, F83, FPC
or any other hobbyist Forth system.

Forth didn't begin/end with LMI. If UR/Forth had an edge it didn't last
long and lower-end products like PC/Forth weren't much better than F83
and limited compared to F-PC. As to what caused the exodus I'd nominate
Windows 95.

[dxforth]

Post by a***@littlepinkcloud.invalid

Post by dxforth

Post by a***@littlepinkcloud.invalid

Short of FIG making some sort of admission, I neither see nor
presume a direct link between FIG-Forth and MicroForth.

It's history.
Bill Ragsdale, a successful Bay Area security system manufacturer,
became aware of the benefits of microFORTH, and in 1978 asked FORTH,
Inc. to produce a version of microFORTH for the 6502. FORTH,
Inc. declined, seeing much less market demand for microFORTH on the
6502 than the more popular 8080, Z80 and 6800 CPUs.
Ragsdale then looked for someone with the knowledge of microFORTH
and intimate familiarity with the 6502 to port a version of
microFORTH to the 6502. He found Maj. Robert Selzer, who had used
microFORTH for an AMI 6800 development system on an Army project and
was privately developing a standalone editor/assembler/linker
package for the 6502. Selzer wrote a 6502 Forth assembler, and used
the Army’s microFORTH metacompiler to target compile the first 6502
stand-alone Forth for the Jolt single board computer.

History according to Forth Inc who appear to be taking credit for
the mass popularity of Forth that ensued :)

Why bother? Given that they were responsible for Forth itself, that
would be hard to avoid.

Forth Inc came later - an entity set up by Moore to exploit Forth
commercially following its development at the NRAO where he was an
employee.

Post by a***@littlepinkcloud.invalid

Post by dxforth
"the first microcomputer implementation of Forth was made available
for the Pet computer. Forth Dimensions immediately started getting
letters telling us how terrible the product was [...] That put us in
worried mode. Here was a vendor proclaiming loud and clear that he
was selling a Forth system, which was very poor, for personal
computer use. We had contact, by that time, with Elizabeth Rather
from FORTH, Inc. We queried their future role, would they have Forth
for the Apple and the Pet, would they support personal computers?
She very clearly stated, “absolutely not,” that was not their
mission and they would not support personal computer versions."

That does not really seem to contradict the quoted text I posted.

It's saying that were the future of Forth left in the hands of
Forth Inc there would be none.

Post by a***@littlepinkcloud.invalid
It
certainly does not address the issue of the direct link between
fig-FORTH and microFORTH.
Anyway, you've seen it now. I'm surprised that you haven't seen it
before.

What direct link? The sources look completely different to me.
Can you point to technology exclusive to Forth Inc and MicroForth
that appears in Fig-Forth?