Probably my closest claim to fame was when I wrote a little utility, "pgdbf", that reads binary xBase files and writes out .sql files you can pipe into the psql command to turn them into PostgreSQL tables. I wrote it because my work needed it. Long story. Anyway, I asked my boss if I could release it under the GPLv3 and he agreed to it.

I was utterly gobsmacked to find that it became pretty popular in South America, where Visual FoxPro was wildly popular in some fields. VFP users were left with gigabytes of data in xBase and weren't sure how to easily get it into a "big" database. Someone found my little project and it spread like wildfire, to the point that I got invited to a few conferences to speak about it. I wasn't able to go at the time because of life reasons, but one of my minor regrets was not going to Brazil to talk to a roomful of people who somehow, some way, all decided that I'd written a roadmap to get them out of a pickle.

Thanks, Ashton-Tate. I have some fun stories to tell due to your inventions.