Title
Thatcher, Dick (Richard W., Jr.) oral history
Catalog Number
102702145
Type
Document
Description
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.
Date
1986-04-06
Contributor
|
Johnson, Luanne, Interviewer; Editor
|
|
Thatcher, Dick (Richard W., Jr.), Interviewee
|
Publisher
Computer History Museum
Place of Publication
Houston, TX, USA
Extent
19 p.
Category
Transcription
Subject
Thatcher, Dick (Richard W., Jr.); Thatcher, Dick; Brown, Walter; Atlantic Software; Head, Robert; Software Resources, Inc.; Programming Methods, Inc.; PMI; Langnas, George; Lambda Technology; Casagrande, Frank; Score software product; Association of Independent Software Companies (AISC); ADAPSO; International Systems, Inc.; Welke, Larry; Informatics
Collection Title
Oral history collection
