[Reader-list] Straight from the horses mouth..

[Tripta]

This is an open letter written by bill gates to the members of homebrew club 
complaining about the theaft of the first software he had written and sold.
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                 February 3, 1976An Open Letter to Hobbyists 

    To me, the most critical thing in the hobby market right now is the lack 
of good software courses, books and software itself. Without good software 
and an owner who understands programming, a hobby computer is wasted. Will 
quality software be written for the hobby market? 

    Almost a year ago, Paul Allen and myself, expecting the hobby market to 
expand, hired Monte Davidoff and developed Altair BASIC. Though the initial 
work took only two months, the three of us have spent most of the last year 
documenting, improving and adding features to BASIC. Now we have 4K, 8K, 
EXTENDED, ROM and DISK BASIC. The value of the computer time we have used 
exceeds $40,000. 

    The feedback we have gotten from the hundreds of people who say they are 
using BASIC has all been positive. Two surprising things are apparent, 
however. 1) Most of these "users" never bought BASIC (less than 10% of all 
Altair owners have bought BASIC), and 2) The amount of royalties we have 
received from sales to hobbyists makes the time spent of Altair BASIC worth 
less than $2 an hour. 

    Why is this? As the majority of hobbyists must be aware, most of you 
steal your software. Hardware must be paid for, but software is something to 
share. Who cares if the people who worked on it get paid? 

    Is this fair? One thing you don't do by steeling software is get back at 
MITS for some problem you may have had. MITS doesn't make money selling 
software. The royalty paid to us, the manual, the tape and the overhead make 
it a break-even operation. One thing you do is prevent good software from 
being written. Who can afford to do professional work for nothing? What 
hobbyist can put 3-man years into programming, finding all bugs, documenting 
his product and distribute for free? The fact is, no one besides us has 
invested a lot of money in hobby software. We have written 6800 BASIC, and 
are writing 8080 APL and 6800 APL, but there is very little incentive to make 
this software available to hobbyists. Most directly, the thing you do is 
theft. 

    What about the guy who re-sell Altair BASIC, aren't they making money on 
hobby software? Yes, but those who have been reported to us may lose in the 
end. They are the ones who give hobbyists a bad name, and should be kicked 
out of any club meeting they show up at. 

    I would appreciate letters from any one who wants to pay up, or has a 
suggestion or comment. Just write me at 1180 Alvarado SE, #114, Albuquerque, 
New Mexico, 87108. Nothing would please me more than being able to hire ten 
programmers and deluge the hobby market with good software.                   
         
Bill Gates 
General Partner, Micro-soft
pcbiography.com