In 1965 an operating system called GIRLS was created. Eventually the name was changed to Pick, which was the last name of one of the developers, Dick Pick. The Pick operating system contained a database. Eventually the operating system was discontinued, but the database, also called Pick, was converted to run under the Unix operating system.
Other similar databases have been developed that shared some of the core features of the Pick database. One of these is the Universe database, originally developed by a company named Vmark.
In 1993 development began on yet another database, OpenQM, that shared many concepts with the Universe database. In 2007 an open source version of OpenQM was released. However, it was a one time release of code and there was no attempt to synchronize the open source version with later releases of commercial OpenQM.
A few other developers took the released OpenQM code and continued to develop the open source version called ScarletDME. However, parity with the commercial version was not maintained. In 2022 a 64 bit version of ScarletDME was released by one of the developers. However, after that, development of the open source version largely stopped.
In 2024 two new developers decided to fork ScarletDME, remove the legacy OpenQM and ScarletDME branding and release a 64 bit version called SD (for String Database). Several largely unused legacy features have been removed including vestiges of code that still remained to support Windows operating systems. This forked version runs on 64 bit Linux only. An installer is provided for Ubuntu based systems. Currently the installer has been tested on Debian 12, Ubuntu 24.04 and Mint 22. It also works on Ubuntu running under the Windows Subsystem for Linux and Ubuntu on the Rasperry Pi 5.