John Cullinane, on the record in 1986, called 'IBM unbundling created the software industry' a myth — and credited the early-1970s recession instead

John J. Cullinane founded Cullinane Corporation in 1968 — by his own account, the first company formed specifically to sell software as a product rather than bundle it with hardware or services. In a 1986 oral history (Computer History Museum, ref. X4581.2008, pp.13-15), interviewed by Luanne Johnson, he directly rejected the standard origin story of the independent software industry: that IBM's 1969 "unbundling" of software from hardware pricing — itself widely attributed to pressure from United States v. IBM — created the market for standalone software companies.

In his words: "That's a myth. It helped that IBM legitimized to some degree or another that software was a product... but on a scale of 10, I'd give it a 1 or 2... What really legitimized the software industry is that in the early 1970s and mid-1970s there was a tremendous economic crunch." Cullinane located the real turning point in 1972-76, when, for the first time, "economic considerations started to take precedence" in data-processing purchasing — companies suddenly had to justify software spend on its own terms rather than treat it as a hardware afterthought.

This is a first-person account from someone who founded a software company during the exact period in question, which clears the sourcing floor for a surprising historical/biographical claim (Tier 1, primary oral history, quoted verbatim) without needing escalation or a verification flag.

The same case Cullinane is debunking — U.S. v. IBM — is the subject of claim-baxter-dismissed-ibm-case-same-day-att-breakup-finalized, which covers how and when that antitrust suit actually ended.