The Software History Shop
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"One for the History Books" Workshop Moderator: Luanne Johnson Recorded: September 24, 2000 Palo Alto, California CHM Reference number: X6351.2012 © 2011 Computer History Museum Table of Contents ORIGIN OF THE SOFTWARE HISTORY CENTER ............................................................................................................... 5 STRATEGIES FOR PRESERVING HISTORICAL MATERIALS ............................................................................................. 10 ROLE OF THE CHARLES BABBAGE INSTITUTE IN SOFTWARE HISTORY PRESERVATION ............................................... 17 TYPES OF MATERIALS TO BE PRESERVED .................................................................................................................... 20 ORIGINS OF PANSOPHIC SYSTEMS .............................................................................................................................. 27 ORIGINS OF AGS COMPUTERS, INC. ............................................................................................................................ 29 ORIGINS OF APPLIED DATA RESEARCH (ADR) .............................................................................................................. 31 EARLY SOFTWARE INDUSTRY FAILURES ...................................................................................................................... 33 ORIGINS OF FORTEX DATA SYSTEMS ........................................................................................................................... 35 ORIGINS OF INTERNATIONAL COMPUTER PROGRAMS, INC. (ICP) .............................................................................. 37 IMPACT OF ICP ON THE EMERGING SOFTWARE INDUSTRY ........................................................................................ 39 ORIGINS OF BOOLE & BABBAGE .................................................................................................................................. 42 ORIGINS OF ADPAC ...................................................................................................................................................... 45 ORIGINS OF ARGONAUT INFORMATION SYSTEMS, INC. ............................................................................................. 48 CHARLES BABBAGE INSTITUTE’S SOFTWARE HISTORY PROJECT ................................................................................. 50 APPROACHES TO STRUCTURING THE SOFTWARE INDUSTRY ...................................................................................... 57 FUTURE STRATEGIES FOR PRESERVING SOFTWARE HISTORY ..................................................................................... 64 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ................................................................................................................................................ 72 "One for the History Books" Workshop Conducted by Software History Center Abstract: On September 22 and 23, 2000, The Charles Babbage Institute sponsored a conference in Palo Alto, CA, on the impact of IBM’s decision in 1969 to unbundle the price of software from the price of hardware on the emergence of companies selling software as a product. Many of the attendees at the conference were people who had founded software companies in the 1960s and early 1970s, so The Software History Center decided to take advantage of the congregation of so many people who had participated in the early software industry to organize a workshop for the following day. The purpose of the workshop was to ask people to recollect their experiences in founding their companies and especially to discuss factors other than unbundling which affected the early growth of their companies. Conference reporters were on hand to transcribe the conversations that took place. Attendees: Barbara Brizdle Worked for Tymshare and IDC starting in the 1970s; President of Software Strategies, consulting to software companies, from 1984 to 1990 Martin Campbell-Kelly Professor of Computer Science, University of Warwick, UK Peter Cunningham Founded INPUT, one of the first market research firms to focus on the software services and software products markets, in 1974 Phil Frana Software History Project Manager, Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota George Glaser President, The Charles Babbage Foundation Marty Goetz CHM Ref: X6351.2012 © 2011 Computer History Museum Page 3 of 72 Co-founded Applied Data Research (ADR) in 1959; received the first software patent in 1968 Norma Goetz Accompanying Marty Goetz Burt Grad One of the members of the IBM team which developed the plan for unbundling software from hardware in 1969 Peter Harris Founded ADPAC Corporation in 1963 Niki Harris Accompanying Peter Harris Karol Hines Responsible for software product design and development at Ross Systems in the 1970s Doug Jerger Co-founded Fortex, an early accounting software products company targeting large companies with mainframe computers, in 1970 Luanne Johnson Founded Argonaut Information Systems to sell payroll and accounts payable software in 1971 Ken Kolence Co-founded Boole & Babbage in 1967, the first systems software product company in Silicon Valley Ed LaHay Worked for a variety of software manufacturers and systems integrators including IBM, Pansophic, Forecross and Logica Jan Phillips Worked for DEC in the 1980s developing and managing software industry relationships Joe Piscopo Founded Pansophic Systems (1969) which sold the PANVALET tape library management system and EASYTRIEVE, a report writer and data retrieval product Esther Roditti Contracts counsel to ADAPSO1; headed the project to develop model licensing and services contracts starting in the late 1970s Larry Schoenberg 1 ADAPSO, The Computer Software and Services Industry Association, changed its name to the Information Technology Association of America (ITAA) in 1991. CHM Ref: X6351.2012 © 2011 Computer History Museum Page 4 of 72 Co-founder, in 1967, of AGS, a software professional services firm, which expanded into software products and distribution during the late 1970s and 1980s; served as Chair of ADAPSO in 1982 Larry Welke Founded the ICP (International Computer Programs, Inc.) Quarterly, a catalog of software products, first published in January, 1967; served as Chair of ADAPSO in 1989 Nissey Welke Accompanying Larry Welke Duane Whitlow Developed Syncsort in the late 1960s to compete with IBM's sort and other sort programs Jeff Yost Associate Director, Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota Origin of The Software History Center Luanne Johnson: As most of you know, I've been interested in the history of the software industry and the lack of attention given to it for a long time. As has Burt Grad. We put up a Web site a couple of years ago to try to attract some attention to the need to preserve the history of the industry before it is lost. Our experience with the Web site led us to realize that we were not making enough progress with an informal approach. We really needed a formal organization that could raise money to make things happen. Then, in November 1999, Fortune magazine published an article in which they they identified the top four businessmen of the century as Henry Ford, Alfred Sloan, Tom Watson, Jr. and Bill Gates. The article described the accomplishments of each of these people and they said about Bill Gates that the most important thing he did was form a new kind of company because prior to Microsoft there were no pure software companies. [Laughter] My first reaction was to get mad. I wrote an a very angry letter to the editor of Fortune, which they published, in which I said that claim was preposterous. But as I thought about it more, I realized that it validated what Burt and I had been harping onthe fact that there isn't any research being done on that era of the industry. So if you are a writer for Fortune, there’s no place to go to get information about the mainframe software industry. And I was very gratified yesterday at the Charles Babbage Institute conference on software history when Martin Campbell-Kelly backed up what we've been saying. He's a professional historian with researchers working for him and they’ve been able to find very little information about the origins of the industry. So, in February, 2000, Burt and I set up The Software History Center as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit tax-exempt organization to pursue the preservation of the history of the software industry. What CHM Ref: X6351.2012 © 2011 Computer History Museum Page 5 of 72 we're trying to do is create a central place where information can be accessedwe're talking about a Web site, not a physical locationon the assumption that if there is a place to go where that information can be found, then people will begin to research it and write about it, and we will begin to see greater awareness of the history of the industry. Software history is a huge topic given the tremendous growth of the industry over the past couple of decades but right now we're focusing on companies that were started before 1980 because those are the ones that are most vulnerable in terms of information being lost. And our focus is on the software business as opposed to software technology. I'm going to talk about that focus a little more because there's a lot that's starting to happen for the first time in the history of the technology of software and the history of programming. The Charles Babbage Institute at the University of Minnesota has a new initiative on the history of software. And The Computer