## 0.5. Acknowledgments

Alligator would like to thank his wife, Carolyn, for putting up with his authorial melodramatics and flouncing during the writing of this book. Martin McCarthy should also get his name in lights for proofreading far too many of the early drafts of the book. Phil Kizer also deserves a credit for running the servers that the DBI web site has sat on between 1995 and early 1999. Karin and John Attwood, Andy Burnham, Andy Norfolk, Chris Tweed, and many others on the stones mailing list deserve thanks (and beer) for aiding the preservation and presentation of many of the megalithic sites around the UK. Further thanks to the people behind ASLaN for volunteering to do a difficult job, and doing it well.

Linda Mui definitely deserves an O'Reilly bag and pair of old sunglasses for her fabulous editing job, and, last but not least, thanks to Tim for making the book far better than it would have been had I written it alone.

Tim would like to thank his wife, Máire, for being his wife; Larry Wall for giving the world Perl; Ted Lemon for having the idea that was, many years later, to become the DBI, and for running the mailing list for many of those years. Thanks also to Tim O'Reilly for nagging me to write a DBI book, to Alligator for actually starting to do it and then letting me jump on board (and putting up with my pedantic tendencies), and to Linda Mui for being a great editor.

The DBI has a long history[1] and countless people have contributed to the discussions and development over the years. First, we'd like to thank the early pioneeers including Kevin Stock, Buzz Moschetti, Kurt Andersen, William Hails, Garth Kennedy, Michael Peppler, Neil Briscoe, David Hughes, Jeff Stander, and Forrest D. Whitcher.

> [1]It all started on September 29, 1992.

Then, of course, there are the poor souls who have struggled through untold and undocumented obstacles to actually implement DBI drivers. Among their ranks are Jochen Wiedmann, Jonathan Leffler, Jeff Urlwin, Michael Peppler, Henrik Tougaard, Edwin Pratomo, Davide Migliavacca, Jan Pazdziora, Peter Haworth, Edmund Mergl, Steve Williams, Thomas Lowery, and Phlip Plumlee. Without them, the DBI would not be the practical reality it is today.

We would both like to thank the many reviewers to gave us valuable feedback. Special thanks to Matthew Persico, Nathan Torkington, Jeff Rowe, Denis Goddard, Honza Pazdziora, Rich Miller, Niamh Kennedy, Randal Schwartz, and Jeffrey Baker.

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