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No, just whiny.

Have you ever read Bill Gates' Open Letter to Hobbyists?

First Personal Computer
But if you mean a modern PC (personal microcomputer not sold in kit), it was french and named MICRAL. Ref.

It is Microsoft's fault. Not for allowing people to develop for Windows, but for creating closed-source software. Until the early 1970s, almost all software came in source code form {every computer was different enough that it had to} and vendors actually listened to suggestions from customers.

In 1974, or maybe it was '76 -- anyway, it was while Linus was still a nipper -- Bill Gates got a bit annoyed because people were sharing a program he had written. He thought they were stealing from him {a lot of people would say that failure to share is a form of stealing} and wrote a rather well-known open letter. Unfortunately for everyone else, nobody took Gates seriously and he was not given the DGK he so richly deserved.

If there was no closed-source software there would be much, much less malware. It really is that simple. Closed-source benefits only a few and disadvantages almost everybody. More good than harm would be done by outlawing it.

For example, how many companies fortunes have been made with digital computers?

So you are claiming that, without the Moon landing, digital computers woudln't have been invented?

No person is an island. All the benefits of all human endeavour belong to all of humanity.

If I write a piece of software which can improve someone else's lot, I have a duty to the rest of the world to make that software available to them. If that means I can't sit on my arse all day making money just selling that programme, then so be it.

If you light your {unlit} candle from my {lit} one, does my room get any darker? Will my candle last any less long? I have lost nothing, you have gained something. So it goes with computer software. The effort in replicating software already written is comparable to the effort in sticking the end of a wick in a flame. Yes, somebody wrote that software in the first place; but they were going to write it anyway, whether or not anybody paid them for a copy. I lit that candle {which, by the way, was a non-trivial effort involving a flint and steel, tinder and kindling -- matches have not been invented in this figure of speech} because it was dark, not because I thought I could make money charging people for a light. How could there be anything fair or right about denying someone something which would cost me nothing to do, knowing that but for me they might fall in the dark with an unlit candle in the house?

Somewhere in a parallel universe, there was a person a bit like Bill Gates who wrote a whingeing "open letter to hobbyists" a bit like this one. At the following week's meeting of their computer club, a resolution was passed calling for the troublemaker to be hauled into the Gents' toilets and given a Bloody Good Kicking {probably a couple of head-flushes with seat-whacks too for good measure, and to prevent the casualty from losing consciousness before satisfaction was achieved}. Thenceforth, on that planet, a law was passed, and it said this: That the author of a computer programme has exactly one right in respect of that programme, and that is the right to be identified as its author, for as long as any living person remembers any true fact about the person or the programme; and that everybody has the right to distribute the source code of any computer programme ever written, with or without modifications and whether or not accompanied by an executable version, so long as they did not try to change the original author's name.

Pre Win to Win98 days. Explosion of shareware and home brew projects. X10 is a success story from home brew kits. Ever read the Bill Gates Open Letter?
Not related to Windows but Windows did have geek appeal

Name the alternative that was free to program on in 1989-1996 era that had a considerable market share. Didn't think so. MS has it's position today because of giving away free developer tools then

It is my understanding that Bill Gates' Open Letter to Hobbyists was the first recorded instance of the "share code == theft" idea. Granted, the grandparent poster was talking about the use of "pirate", not "theft", but he's not far off.

It would be an interesting academic exercise to see where the first usage of "share code == piracy" came from; however, "copy==pirate" is clearly a derivative of the "copy==theft" idea, and owes its roots to Microsoft, even if it wasn't born there.

Cut the guy some slack.

[re-post] Isn't it amazing how much attitude is reflected in engineering? Just IMHO, MS might have the brightest engineers etc. on the planet; but they'll be hobbled by the corporate attitude. http://www.blinkenlights.com/classiccmp/gateswhine .html [blinkenlights.com] I guess the world owes him a living. Notice the date on it.

http://www.blinkenlights.com/classiccmp/gateswhine .html I guess the world owes him a living. Notice the date on it.

You mean like Bill?

...Bill's bluff. He had to get better at snowing people, so now the computer market is flooded with crap software.

The Quick and Dirty OS sold to IBM by a man who dumpster dived previous "works". Remember though, without him, you would not have such quality code deluging the market. Two decades later, he's still pushing the same codebase, despite twice declaring it dead.

come on, we are talking about the long arms of marketing, slapping the opposite of microsoft and novell.

if the report or the response reflects reality does not really matter, it's just about the +2 "keep in discussion" bonus for the one and the "-1 good counterattack" for the other.

it's definitly not the open letter to hobbyists we are talking about, it assumes the target group knows that self maintained cars or a hammer-like computer fetish fill a niche not affecting every-day work of the masses in a way, they notice.

He was a rich, whiney little slime in 1976, and he hasn't changed a bit. It seems that being a whiney little slime is profitable.

Gates has always hated hackers and those touting the open-source paradigm. As early as 1976, even before Microsoft was a force to contend with, he wrote a letter, the infamous Open Letter to Hobbyists, telling them to stop their activities.

Why? Because it was hurting software developers and by the lack of monetary compensation, it prevented good software from being written. The irony is that Bill himself said that the best way to learn how to write good software is to read source code produced by others.

Bill Gates' open letter to hobbyists.

From Richard Stallman's original post to net.unix-wizards (1983) in which he announces GNU/GNU's not Unix:

Why I Must Write GNU

I consider that the golden rule requires that if I like a program I
must share it with other people who like it. I cannot in good
conscience sign a nondisclosure agreement or a software license
agreement.

So that I can continue to use computers without violating my principles,
I have decided to put together a sufficient body of free software so that
I will be able to get along without any software that is not free.

This, along with the rest of the post, seems like a direct response to Bill Gates' Open Letter to Hobbyists (1976) in which Gates states:

"Almost a year ago, Paul Allen and myself, expecting the hobby market to expand, hired Monte Davidoff and developed Altair BASIC. [...] Now we have 4K, 8K, EXTENDED, ROM and DISK BASIC. The value of the computer time we have used exceeds $40,000.

and:

"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 on 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?"

and:

"I would appreciate letters from any one who wants to pay up, or has a suggestion or comment. Just write to 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."

Mr. Gates has devoted his life to creating an industry, and it seems Mr. Stallman has devoted his to preserving the rights of those who use technology in response to Mr. Gates' inquiry. Mr. Gates' influence has been felt across the globe, and the influence of ideas by Stallman are still expanding. GNU GPL, written by Stallman, has given birth to the following behind Linux, has influenced the Creative Commons iniative, and influenced projects like Wikipedia and numerous other projects that 'share.' Wikipedia is incredibly successful, and sites are rapidly adopting the CC license for podcasting, music distrubition, etc. I have seen posts here on Slashdot regarding Stallman's statements as 'FUD' (fear, uncertainy, doubt.) I'm not sure this is fair; considering Stallman's record. The attacks on Mr. Gates by posters aren't completely unfair, but the man has changed the world and should be respected for that.

Patents are tricky, because they do promote 'openness,' yet at the same time are ambiguous, restrictive and provide a government granted monopoly. The problems with patents have extended past these software patents, though. Biochemical compound discoveries are being patented. An idea of say, a difference engine or steam-powered engine, are different than the discovery of a naturally occuring compound.

I've never heard of any program that was actually written by Gates

His argument is the same as it always is: If you don't give me your money, you won't be able to do what you want. It's hard to pull that out of that rambling BS piece, but the argument is there. In a nutshell it is, you must accept my DRM or "authors" (I think he really means big media publishers) won't let you have their content. In this case he further's his argument by telling you that you never had the rights you thought you did if the "author" decides you don't have it. Once again, he pretends he wishes to reward others for their work. As usual, he tries to shore it all up with insults, "communist" this time but he's always called his customers "theives". You can see the same arguments from him all the way back in 1976

The key quotes are:

What we want is to have as much content as possible available. ... an envelope ... in order to get authors to be willing to put an ever broader range of content on our platform ... there's content that can only be there if it's rights protected ...

DRM is just like a speed bump that reminds you whether you're staying within the scope of rights that you have or you don't.

This is an astoundingly dishonest position at every level. The fact of the mater is that authors ARE putting their work up on the Creative Commons for everyone to use without restrictions. They don't want Mr. Gate's "protection". They want to compete on their merits and publish in a normal, and easy to use way. Surely, authors have enough sense to know that the control they pass onto big publishers through DRM will be lost to them forever. Right now the RIAA can threaten to keep your work off air and out of stores. Can you imagine the power music publisher would have if they could throw a few bits in their database and prevent your music from working anywhere? Not even the big publisher's believe that they will remain in control of their rights if they lend Microsoft their trust.

Mr. Gates and his DRM scheme are not "enablers" of any sort. His and big media's expansion of copyright and other forms of government granted exclusive franchises are the reason we have more consolidated and stagnant media than ever. When you give your money to this man, you hurt your rights in every way. If you use his software, he owns your system. Now he wants to own your media too. No thanks, I do just fine without him or his software.

He's a fine one to talk about property rights, since his software empire had its foundation in ignoring Harvard's property rights.

What do you want to be when you grow up? How about a whiny little twit. The world really rewards them.

the Apple computer, which can be justifiably named the first personal computer

Like him or not, Bill Gates was the guy who really made it so developers could get paid. In his famous open letter to hobbyists Bill outlined the modern software industry, which he and a few others subsequently created. I'm as open source as everyone else on this board (except for those people Microsoft pays to post here) but I recognize the fact that Bill and Microsoft changed computing. And alot of it was through software. Denying windows popularity is pointless. Insert resistance is futile joke here

Oh? What were their noble goals back then? Harass computer kit users over licensing issues?

If a Russian family can't pay 30$ for a computer game made in the USA, they could probably pay 3$ for a game made in Russia and with Russian programmers and Russian artists.

Which game is that? Tetris?

Noone will buy your home-brewn game for $4 when they can buy a pirated copy of Quake 3 for 1$.

Where is this Noone fellow? I want to sell a few copies of TOD Deluxe Edition.

Microsoft used to be officially happy if you pirate their software at home

BS. Please read Bill Gates's open letter to hobbyists.

Whenever I have to send something to the company I work for, e.g., a request for vacation, it _has_ to be in some idiotic Word or Excel.

Send RTF or CSV renamed to DOC or XLS; Word or Excel won't care and will happy translate the document from the exchange format to its internal format. As for the other way, OpenOffice.org can already read Word documents (even damaged ones) better than Word itself can, and there's now too much of an installed base of machines that can read older Word documents for Microsoft to break back-compatibility again.

Recognizing that free alternatives to Microsoft have a lower pain of ownership does not make a person "radical". Remembering that Microsoft has sued public school systems, paid people to lie and disrupt "competitor's" discussions, PR firms to forge letters to public officials, and routinely breaks other people's software and blames the victim takes nothing more than a brain with a memory. You might not like what I say, but I don't see much reasonable refutation.

Free software works, M$ does not, the details are less important than the big picture. Here are my answers to your little quiz and a question of my own:

1. Who most likely wrote the software? A) Ground-breaking AI B) People C) Monkeys

People. They write free software that works too.

2. A user always reads and follows instructions. A) True B) False

The software should work anyway, like Knoppix does.

3. Windows' registry was designed for software protection. A) True B) False

I don't care. It breaks the system.

4. Which OS is the most compatible with today's hardware market? A) Windows B) Linux C) OSX D) Other...

Linux. Once free, a driver lasts forever. There are now more devices that run under Linux than any other kernel. Just look through any company closet for the pile of devices that made "obsolete" by an OS upgrade to know this is true. You can also look at the number of ports to different hardware. FreeBSD does that well, but it does not have the device support Linux does.

5. Name one piece of software that is perfect: ______________________

Any software that has been qualified for nuclear license evaluation. It's amazing, you can write complex software that does what it should and is verifiable.

6. In windows, you can turn off a screen saver. A) True B) False

Sure you can, until a service pack turns it back on. Who cares? The thing still has uptimes of less than a week and is prone to worms and full of bugs.

7. Microsoft _tries_ to make their code better. A) True B) False

Failure: when your best effort is not good enough. They don't have the time or resources to compete with free software. No one does.

Here's a question for you. The Bill Gate's method of software creation, stated here is:
A. Wrong.
B. Obsolete.
C. Greedy.
D. Stupid.
E. All of the above.

Long live M$ BASIC. Opps, they are pulling the plug on that one for .NET

http://www.blinkenlights.com/classiccmp/gateswhine .html

Story at eleven.

Then why not continue using the (perfectly good) copy of Linux they already have?

Microsoft (as a group of individuals, not as a corporate pseudoperson) puts a product on the market with the expectation that its users will compensate them for their efforts in its production.

It's a package deal - if you don't agree with any part of it, the moral thing to do is reject the whole trade (including the privilege being offered).

Or, to shorten that up a little, "If you don't want to pay what they're asking, don't use it."

Open Letter to Hobbyists

Top line: "Who can afford to do professional work for nothing?" Boy, has that one been thoroughly answered! (-:

At one time, they were the "evil ones", and Microsoft was the "savior" (horrors!).

Were MS ever the "saviors"? What about Gates' 1976 "Open letter to hobbyists"?

Sure, MS were part of IBM's downfall, but that was business.

James Gosling certainly knew about Arthur van Hoff before 1993, at least since 1989 when Arthur released his amazing "GoodNeWS".

While I was working at Sun from 1990-1991, we flew Arthur out from Scotland to California and negotiated with him about integrating GoodNeWS aka HyperNeWS aka COOL aka HyperLook) into Sun's X11/NeWS window system. We spent quite a bit of time redesigning a new version of HyperNeWS for The NeWS Toolkit, I ported HyperNeWS to TNT, and Arthur delivered a prototype of the new system called "COOL" (Customizable Open Look).

Arthur was well known and respected in the NeWS community for his incredible work with HyperNeWS, NeWS, PostScript, a C to PostScript compiler called PdB, an SGML parser, and other amaing stuff. We lobbied Sun quite hard to convince them to hire Arthur, but they strung him along for a long time then finally refused, because they wanted to kill NeWS instead of doing something great with it.

But I wanted to work with Arthur anyway, so I left Sun and went out to the Turing Institute in Glasgow Scotland, to work with Arthur. We developed HyperNeWS into a product called "HyperLook", which we released in 1992. HyperLook included a wonderful PostScript graphics editor that you could use to create user interface components and customize the look and feel of the desktop with PostScript code and graphics.

I also ported SimCity to SunOS and used HyperLook to build the SimCity user interface and client/server interface, which we released at the same time.

As Peter Delany wrote on 10-29-1991:

Ok, I'll try to liven things up a little. Perhaps Don Hopkins or the XNeWS developers

Pat Naughton and James Gosling, could follow up with a few tid bits. Or a line from Tim Niblett and Author v

Really. So what exactly did Bill Gates mean when he wrote this:

An Open Letter to Hobbyists

To which the MS guys, with a serious voice and without a moment's hesitation, only replied, "this we will never do"

Of course not. Basic company policy is still set by Bill Gates, who wrote the Open Letter to Hobbyists in 1976. That letter set the direction for Microsoft -- sell lots of copies of proprietary software -- that made him the richest man in the world. Any change in that direction will have to come from Bill himself, and the odds of that seem to range from slim to none.

No one at Redmond is going to see or say that the Emperor has no clothes. They get paid too much money not to bolt on the rose colored glasses. (welding helmet?) So don't accuse Microsoft of being clueful. If they were, we would have seen some evidence of it by now.

One thing you do 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?

Nothing would please me more than being able to hire ten programmers and deluge the hobby market with good software.

Because he was soooo right the first time...

Not that I'm entirely disagreeing, mind you. But one of the main things software helps you make is more software... which (DeToqueville types claim) will go to zero value as a result of the complete unprotection of IP. Talented people may be able to develop and refine operating systems as a hobby these days, but they have to earn a living before they put effort into their hobbies. And increases in productivity mean nothing if what you produce becomes worthless.


The patent and copyright system in the US was created to try to balance the need to give creative types some rewards for their efforts (to encourage progress and new thought) while enabling society to reap the benfits at limited cost and encouraging sucessive development. Recent legislation has begun badly imbalancing this towards benefiting creators-- or worse, their descendants. Weak examiniations by the patent office exacerbate the problem.

Bill Gates' basic point from 1976 was that, if you do good work, you should be able to get paid for it. And, from an economics standpoint, more people tend to be inclined to do that work if they get rewarded.

Of course, at the time writing software was a highly arcane and rare skill. These days, Microsoft's business is becoming more and more like prostitution in a college town: hard to make a living at because so many talented amateurs are giving a comparable product away for free.

Software to do a job appears to pass through three stages: where nobody knows how to do it, where an oligarchy knows how to do it, and where nearly every shmuck knows how to do it. As time progresses, and computer skills have spread, more and more things move from the first category to the second, and then the second to the third.

But you can only make a boodle of cash if what you're doing is in the middle category. What scares Bill is that almost all of Microsofts gigabucks of revenue come from Operating Systems and Office Suites... and Linux and Open Office have started moving (via the GPL) both of those from the hands of the oligarchy to the hands of the masses.

The DeToqueville people are whining about this trickle down trend as the third part of their "three edged sword". In this, they are unfortunately like King Canute and the tide. The solution, obviously, is to be move more things from what nobody can do into the hands of the oligarchy. Of course, this means that those (like Microsoft) cannot rest on their Intellectual laurel Property, but must keep working hard with no assurance they will be the oligarchs who get the next amazing idea... as Google seems to have demonstrated. It may well be that operating systems and office suites will not be where the smart people make their money in the future, but on organizing these tools to make work go smoother (like IBM does). Of course, to make money this way (for long), your CLIENT has to be making money producing something-- which, if IP becomes worthless, won't be an information economy product?

The DeToqueville institute may have some point with the first edge of their sword (as bad as that metaphor becomes), in that the GPL may be TOO STRONG a protection to encourage inventors properly... which I will suggest as a student term paper topic, rather than blather on about here. =)

Their second edge I consider contemptible. Yes, giving away Linux is providing jump starts to lower-income countries. As a fat, lazy American, I find the disparity in the global distribution of wealth digusting, and if adjusting that can be done by giving the poor oportunities to become richer, I can accept that it means that the rich have to work harder to stay that way.

A more interesting point that they raise is the shortsightedness of outsourcing in the effect that it has on redistribution of intellectual power. I think this will be the biggest long-term threat of outsourcing-- the gutting of the American skill set by failing to train replacements for the baby boomers.

1. david dash b at pacbell net

   [PATCH] USB: usbcore blinkenlights

   The per-port LEDs on the most USB 2.0 hubs are programmable. And the USB spec describes some ways to use them, blinking to alert users about hardware (amber) or software (green) problems.

   This patch is the infrastructure for that blinking. And if you should happen to "modprobe usbcore blinkenlights", the LEDs will cycle through all the ports ... which is not a USB-standard mode, but it can certainly handy be handy as a system heartbeat visible across the room.

Das ist goot, ja!

We've been used to it since 1976: An Open Letter to Hobbyists.

Microsoft got its start writing BASIC interpreters. Bill Gates created one for the Altair, which he charged for, and which was widely pirated. Setting the tone for the rest of his career, he lashed out with a scathing open letter to computer hobbyists, saying that quality software couldn't possibly be created without sinking a significant amount of money into it.

Deja vu, eh? Helps to know your history.

Does that mean that Simon is NOT the world's first personal computer? It doesn't have flow control, altho it can make decisions like "is A greater than B" and a "selection" function.

It starts with an open letter...

You missed them! They were available for vintage systems - ebay is your last resort now, sleeper!

Bill's Open Letter to Hobbyists about theft should always be required reading for these discussions.

I think I have already heard it somewhere...

See Bill's open letter to hobbyists

Can MS afford to do professional work for nothing?

How can MS put X-man years into programming, finding all bugs, documenting the product and distribute for free?

Xerox's Alto's had a GUI/Network and E-mail while JOBS was still in shcool! Get it right! Or go here and lern a little. ;) Antique Pre PC Stuff

"Anyone who was around the Open Source movement in the mid-Nineties could see this all the time. If you cared about Linux on the desktop, there was a big list of jobs to do. But you could always instead get a conversation going about Microsoft and Bill Gates. And people would start bleeding from their ears, they would get so mad. "

Bill Gates' Open Letter to the Hobbiests, is the definitive point. February 3 1976 is when calling your customers theives proved to be profitable.

That might depend on what your definition of a PC is. This site might beg to differ.

That was Al Bundy in "Married with Children". Oh yeah, dumb fuckers get what they deserve. Bill Gates is doing his best to fuck everyone, and always been a whiner. Having to use Windows for most of and the rest of his life is punishment enough for his sins.