Thatcher, Dick (Richard W., Jr.) oral history
Richard W. "Dick" Thatcher, Jr., describes how he and Walter Brown founded Atlantic Software in 1968 to broker software products. Their intent was to approach companies that had significant investments in software developed for in-house use and offer to help them recoup that investment by packaging and reselling the software. The concept didn't pan out so they negotiated an agreement to sell Score, a report generator product developed by Programming Methods, Inc. (PMI) but then had to abandon that idea because their agreement provided for royalty payments to PMI that were too high. They then purchased project management software from a company that had developed it but wasn't interested in marketing it and were very successful with that product. He describes the challenges facing a software products company in the late 1960s and early 1970s and how they learned through experience to increase their prices and their level of support. He discusses early efforts to organize the software industry and the roles that ADAPSO and Larry Welke's ICP publications played in developing the industry. Atlantic Software was sold to AGS Computers in 1982.
Item Details
- Date
- 1986-04-06 (Made)
- Type
- Document
- Catalogue number
- 102702145
- Organization
- Computer History Museum
- People
- Jr.) Thatcher (Interviewee)
Luanne Johnson (Interviewer) - Category
- Transcript
- Credit line
- Gift of Johnson, Luanne
- Extent
- 19 p.
- Place of publication
- USA/TX/Houston
- Language
- English
- Acquisition number
- X5551.2010
- Subject
- ADAPSO, Informatics
- Archive collection
- Oral history collection
- Archive hierarchy
- CHM Oral History Collection