I expect they will acknowledge the Pick OS? "a demand-paged, multiuser, virtual memory, time-sharing computer operating system based around a MultiValue database."
I never met anyone who used it, though.
I think its database features have been somewhat overhyped – but no doubt an area of strength when compared to other lower-end systems of the same time period.
The fact that the OS, programming language and database were all a single software package, developed together and sold as a unit, attracted people.
Much of its initial success was also due to its marketing strategy – target ISVs who would resell it as the basis of turnkey solutions.
It was based on a virtual machine, which made it easy to port to disparate hardware platforms – everything from PCs, to multiple incompatible minicomputer lines, to IBM mainframes – a key selling point in its day – although not a unique approach (see UCSD Pascal). Other approaches to portability – such as the C programming language – hadn't really taken off yet.
SQL query support wasn’t added to PICK platforms until the 1990s or thereabouts - at least 10 years after SQL became available on MVS (via DB2, Oracle, etc)
If anyone wants to try out universe which is one of the truly more modern multivalue database, I wrote an installation guide.
I'm sot sure the acronym would stand today, nor indeed Richard Pick's nickname.