Slashdot Mirror
Beginnings Of The Free Software Debate In 1975
Private Essayist writes: "This article in the NY Times (free reg., etc.) tells about an ongoing mystery over who stole a copy of Altair Basic written by Bill Gates in 1975. More important, however, the article shows the beginnings of the debate over the concept of whether or not software should be free. The Homebrew Computer Club members interviewed in this article talk about the debate they had over this issue way back then. It's interesting to read."
Look where the various participants on both sides back then are today. At the time, who would have known?
Even old code wants to be free. =)
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
1. MP3 trading (even though the format might change)
2. Stealing Microsoft's software
3. Running over those danged squirrels
Buy a copy of the new edition of "Fire In The Valley" by Paul Freiberger and Michael Swaine, which reprints the letter from Bill to the Homebrewers, and is also one hell of a book (even if it does make the occasional mistake). Along with "Hackers", it's required reading for Personal Computer History 101.
I use Macs for work, Linux for education, and Windows for cardplaying.
--
So that's where Java comes from...
Drag n' Drop DVD Recommendations
OK, so I filled out a registration, put in e-mail address twice, as asked (so I can be spammed twice?). Then it wouldn't let me in without allowing cookies. How many hoops do you have to jump through just to follow a /. link?
< end rant mode >
Don't even most Open Source people agree that taking physical media (CD's, Floppys, CD-ROMs, books, cars, and yes punch tapes) is stealing?
Where exactly does the line get crossed? Someone saw what they wanted and took it. That's just stealing.
Trolls throughout history:
Jonathan Swift
Then I suggest you avoid super villains.
My mom is not a Karma whore!
password: cypherpunks
I think the NYTimes has made "cypherpunks" permanently unavailable, the jerks.
I adblock all animated gifs.
Blessed be the prime numbered slashdotters
"Hardware must be paid for, but software is something to share. Who cares if the people who worked on it get paid?" (He said this sarcasticly).
All you have to do is look at all these companies that have tried to make money on free or open source software to see that, still 25 years later, it just can't be done.
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
By William Henry Gates III
February 3, 1976
An 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 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? One thing you don't do by stealing 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 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 guys 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 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. Bill Gates General Partner, Micro-Soft
Right, I bet a whole bunch of everyday people (what is this, a toyota commercial?) had Altairs.
Now that's more like it.
Now, before this gets dismissed as mere flamebait, or a troll, let me explain to you why it is neither. The article lauds Microsoft, yes takes the wimpy way out when it talks about "Mr. Sokol" by using the phrase "in his view." Microsoft is hardly responsible for putting power in the hands of the people, as it were.
If you do want to take a look at what companies DID put power in the hands of the people, the first company to look at (IMO) is Lotus corp. The spreadsheet is the piece of software that made Personal Computers worthwhile. Never mind that at the time, both computers and spreadsheets were so new that you (you being used here to describe an average human) had to take a class to use either one - And there were no classes. Lotus made it easy enough for mere humans to grasp. I used to have an IBM PC-1 with Lotus 1-2-3 V1 on it myself, but admittedly I got mine way behind the curve.
Another fine piece of software was Print Shop. I can't even remember who wrote that sucker. Print Shop let you do some pretty snazzy stuff (for the time) in a minimum of time on absolutely antique hardware - Like the Apple ][. It's been followed in modern times by programs like Pagemaker and Quark Xpress. But word, by contrast, didn't even allow you any real freedom of text positioning until very recently. Why should it? It's a word processor - A glorified typewriter.
Mind you, the earliest word processor I can remember of any practical note which could be used without learning a whole new language (Sorry, TeX) was Wordstar. That was some pretty slick software, even back on my Kaypro 4 luggable. I managed to turn in quite a few papers for school on one of those things. And the first one I can remember that did graphics in some reasonable fashion was WordPerfect, which was the de facto standard for god knows how long.
Microsoft's only deserved accolade is that they make things prettier. They can't take credit for windowing systems, the web, or anything else we take for granted these days. They weren't the first to do SMP on intel, they didn't have the first of just about anything. They aren't even the Japan of computing, because they don't actually refine anything. They're more like China (With all due apologies to the great nation of China, which has in fact made some innovations) in that they make cheap knockoffs.
Such is the legacy of Microsoft, and a long and, well, I guess you could say "glorious" reign it will continue to be. When you're number one by such a large margin, it takes some truly boneheaded manouvers to slip down even to number two, let alone last place.
And speaking of which, let's talk about Windows 2000...
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
AN OPEN LETTER TO HOBBYISTS
By William Henry Gates III
February 3, 1976
An 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 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? One thing you don't do by stealing 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 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 guys 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 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.
Bill Gates
General Partner, Micro-Soft
No, Thursday's out. How about never - is never good for you?
The author asked a very important question, is "liberating" software that someone else wrote stealing. What's the difference between taking a cabinet a carpenter slaved over for weeks and code a programmer slaved over. Carpenters sometimes give their creations away, but no one requiers them to, in most countries that is. This is one of the few pieces of software Mr. Bill actually wrote, and look what happens to it, someone ran off with it. Remember, Mr. Bill wasn't rich back then. That was money he needed to pay off all his speeding tickets.
Now the RIAA will demand a tax on all paper tape.
Feed The Need[goatse.cx]
Microsoft doesn't really care if you pirate their software for home use. What gets them is the buisness licenses.
Microsoft has a very simple plan for making money. Produce a cheap, easy-to-support OS for the home user, and an expensive, difficult-to-support OS for the workplace. Make sure that the home OS is missing key features, like being able to connect to network resources as someone other than yourself. Make it expensive to allow people to connect to your servers, charging them per connection. Convince buisnesses that they need the more expensive "Workstation" operating system.
Then in a few years, rename it to "Professional" and convince them that it's a new product. Sell bundles of this "new" product.
If you are the kind of person who doesn't pay for software *ahem* then you don't need support and they can't make any big money off of you anyway. If not, then they don't really care if you pay for their operating system. If you rub it in their face and get caught, then they'll make an example of you just because they can - It keeps the corporations in line to see them go after even the little guy.
Besides, you can't get out of paying for WinCE if you buy a palmtop that uses it yet, and they'll get you in the shorts there for quite some time. I'm sure they're reading your post and chuckling right now.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
For what it's worth, there were people in penguin suits protesting outside the stadium, and another one of my colleagues attended and ask Bill a hard question about open source (which he dodged). We did what we could. ;)
Vovida, OS VoIP
Beer recipe: free! #Source
Cold pints: $2 #Product
I am the one who stole Altair Basic so please call it GNU/Altair thank you very much
- Richard M. Stallman
This website is for news for nerds, stuff that matters.
Repeatedly posting this same pedophile psychobabble under every new topic is not going to win you any friends or supporters. And it's completely off topic. You are just going to piss off more people in the process who come here for techie news, not you trying to shove your lifestyle down their throats.
Just slightly longer than Taco, right?
Please, go away.
Because you can't, you won't, and you don't stop...
Anyway, I saw this story earlier today, and wanted to go see what Bill the G. was crying about. I tried to register, using all of my normal free account names.. 'ihatespam' 'johndoe' 'janedoe' etc, and none of them would work! I tried my full name, I tried 'qwertyuiop' and 'poiuytrewq' and even 'qazxswedc' & 'zaqwsxc' to no luck. After nearly 10 minutes trying to get a new username, I gave up. It really, really pissed me off. I don't want a number appended to my name. Hell, I don't even want to register! Free the news! We already have to look at your advertising..
The point of this article is to ask: Does anyone know a way around 'the system?' One used to be able to go to partners.nytimes.com and head to the story, but it no longer works. Too many people from Slashdot.. Is there a name out there that someone can donate to the cause? Anyone?
/. is a commercial entity. goto slashdot.com
He did the same with DOS. That started out as QDOS, an unauthorised hack of CP/M.
Bill's a hypocrite, if you ask me.
...Produce a cheap, easy-to-support OS for the home user...
Really? When is that coming out?
The cake is a pie
THAT'S the silliest thing I'VE ever heard. You are no better than Mister pedophile. Enough commie bashing. Why dont you go back to writing code with visual C++ and creating half assed shareware that 4 people will pay $95 for the full version of.
I guess this means that Mr. Gates has had every excuse to step-on and rip-off everyone for the last 25 years. I guess we all must pay for this original sin. Mea Culpa.
"..don't you eat that yellow snow."
Brøderbund.
It was such a huge part of their revenue back then that they used to have three major headings on their balance sheet: Applications, Games, and Print Shop.
Then Carmen San Diego came along...
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
Correct. If Gates used the same techniques today to start his company, he'd be in prison for software "piracy".
However, Gates wasn't the major force that lobbied for changes to copyright law to encompass software. That ignominious honor belongs to Time-Warner (nee Warner Communications), who owned Atari at the time. Warner took enormous glee in suing anyone and everyone who wrote a game that looked even remotely like Pac Man...
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
1) An installed base of users around the world with a lifetime of experience in computing.
2) An affordable way (the net) to connect all these users, to allow them to cut down on the complexity of comunication. (Remember, people still "mailed tapes" to move programs around).
3) An evil empire to rebel against (micros~1), thus making all the time hacking worth it in the end (that's just my own little take on it).
Open source software is a viable development model because these 3 thing are in place to empower the people involved. If you were to sit someone down in 1975 and explain to them that you want to be able to "tap the resources of the best and brightest from around the world to contribute code to a common Operating system that will be free for them, and anyone else, to use", they'de think you were nuts.
Bottom line is, BillG had a free ride for a long time because these basic tools for sharing information fast and affordably simply weren't there.
Here is the privacy-enhanced version of the article (remember to turn off cookies and use a proxy server!).
Every time you see a "www.nytimes.com" URL, just replace "www" with "partners".
--
I noticed
--
I noticed
It's getting about time to leave everywhere
username=slashdotusers password=newsfornerds
Good is never enough, when you dream of being great!
I was 12 years old. I had just been introduced to computers. The first language I had been taught was BASIC at the Lawrence Hall of Science in Berkeley, CA. Eventually a microcomputer store opened in my home town called The Byte Shop, where I started annoying the sales people by fiddling with their SOL-20s and Apples, writing little ditties in BASIC. I got to know BASIC real well. I got to know several dialects of BASIC, and could intelligently discuss the relative merits of each.
With all that hands-on experience, I can say without fear of contradiction: Microsoft BASIC was one of the worst BASIC interpreters available. The only one I can think of off-hand that was even worse was Northstar BASIC.
I settled in to a happy relationship with a variant called Extended Cassette BASIC, published by Processor Technology for the SOL-20. This BASIC (back in 1978, mind), had:
Microsoft, in typical form, took another ten years to get as far, and consumed ten times as much memory doing it.
I really should drag out my old SOL-20 and do some side-by-side comparisons of Microsoft's old stuff.
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
...I just find it kinda annoying/evil that the NY Times website insists upon registration. That sort of thing makes me lose interest really fast in a story. I just know that they've probably got some sort of spam-bot waiting to attack.
/*drunk.. fix later*/
Remember, Mr. Bill wasn't rich back then.
Yes, he was.
And remember that quote about how he used to pinch source code listings, without asking the authors, out of University rubbish bins. One wonder how much of Altair BASIC was actually written by Bill, and why it was so buggy.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
http://www.pbs.org/nerds/transcript.html and in particular, http://www.pbs.org/nerds/part1.html has some pretty interesting somments from the people in computing from 1975 and the launch of the Altair.
The debate was not whether software should be free (gratis or otherwise), but whether people have the right to violate the copyright of another, in this case, billy's interpreter. If one receives holy heck for calling such an action "piracy", then let's keep our standards equal and not equate the free software to warez. The only reason copyright protects the GPL is because it also protects Billy Boy. Selective applications of law and/or morality is the antithesis of freedom...
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
AtariBASIC was bad, as was Northstar BASIC you mention, actually I want to call it Zbasic which might be what the .COM file was called on my floppy.
f
I was most familiar with MS-BASIC version 5.21 which came bundled with my father's Morrow MD-2 back in 1982. Similar versions also shipped with the Osborne and Kaypro as I recall.
Now if you are thinking of Microsoft BASIC as being similar to that which shipped with the Apple as Applesoft, or the one in the Commodore PET, I can understand your comments.
I have never seen a SOL-20, or this extended cassette BASIC, but you are in luck... The manual is online:
http://www.thebattles.net/sol20/extcassbasic.pd
Looking it over it really seems to be very close to the Microsoft BASIC I remember. String and file handling isn't as advanced as I recall, but the ability to work with matrices is rather nice.
I don't see exactly what you mean by multi-line user-defined functions, all that is implemented was GOSUB which was available in MS-BASIC 5.21.
Certainly impressive for 1977, but I think I'd be hard pressed to backup the statement that it took 10 years for Microsoft to get that far, and ten times as much memory doing it.
MS-BASIC 5.21 ran on a machine with 64K of RAM. 57K was available after loading CP/M 2.2, and one had about 35K after loading up MS-BASIC, 39K free if you didn't load the Random access file support.
But by 1982 floppy drives were common place, which allowed for techniques such as random access files, so it's understandable it used a few more K.
I think you are thinking of QuickBASIC as being 10 years later and 10 times the memory. But there were many generations of MS-BASIC between 1977 and QuickBASIC.
In all fairness, Microsoft has never sued anyone for stealing the "look and feel" of their software. That hasn't stopped others from suing them over that issue, however.
I don't think Microsoft agrees with that concept considering the number of times they've taken the look and feel of a competitors product.
What Bill Gates was irate about was not that someone had made a piece of software that operated similarly to his, but that someone had actually taken exactly what he had created and gave it away.
Accuse Gates of what you will, but at least be accurate.
Before you dismiss me outright, keep in mind that the word vigilante was hijacked by the media just as the word hacker was. It's been twisted and distorted and is seen by people as being bad and evil.
You may not have personally raped or killed children,but you contribute to the harm of children by your very existence.Children who recieve"erotic training" by fruits like you turn into antisocial misfits like me.Children need a loving nurturing environment with adults they can TRUST.Adults who can fill the role of teacher/mentor without taking advantage of them.
You chose your sexual preference just like anyone on the planet because you have WILL.People can chose anything that gets them off(literally anything that makes your brain and fuzzy reigons twitch)Most follow the path of least resistance and choose heterosex,some are disenchanted with their relation to the opposite sex and choose homosex(no problems with that,just the gene pool being filtered)Others disconnect with men and do the sheep thing.But the lowest worm is the PEDOPHILE.The pedophile transcends even the tasty forbidden fruit mankind has to choose from and preys on the unformed minds and libidos of children.OF COURSE YOU RATIONALIZE THAT ITS O.K.
and of course you seek those who think likewise.
However MOST of mankind has an interest in seeing that our posterity is raised well.That is why we prosecute,incarcerate,beat,torture and kill worms like you no matter how much you say you love children.You are sick,unfortunatly there is no known cure(except hot lead injection),only treatment with a HIGH rate of recidivism.
Personally I see no reason,I,the taxpayer should shell out in excess of $60,000 a year to imprison you merely to satisfy the FAD of politically correct pacifists and christians.
Shit,I doubt you could afford to board yourself in prison.You really could not come up with anything
,now that you've outed yourself,to prove yourself of value higher than an used kleenex.So I suggest you KILL YOURSELF before someone else does.Do you really want someone good and civic minded to face possible prison over you?
Speaking as someone who was preyed upon by freaks like you:IF I EVER FIND YOU,I WILL KNOW YOUR FLESH!(in a Hellraiser-Pinhead sense)Not even
Bob,the Xists and SLACK can save you now.GO DIE!
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
Without good software and an owner who understands programming, a hobby computer is wasted.
Corollary: until Windows is past history, a lot of hobby computers are being wasted.
Will quality software be written for the hobby market?
It certainly has been, but not by Micro-Soft! (-:
The value of the computer time we have used exceeds $40,000.
And all that time was paid for?
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.
This statement makes me curous, Bill. If it only took you two months to write the entire BASIC, why did it take a whole year to tinker with it? Can I ask you a question and get an honest answer? Did ``write'' here mean ``key in from a listing stolen from University rubbish bins?''
People complained that Altair BASIC was buggy. Is that because the bugs were keyed in from a discarded program listing, or because your programming skills were as good as your soldering skills?
The feedback we have gotten from the hundreds of people who say they are using BASIC has all been positive.
Nothing's changed much since. According to you, Bill, as recently as 1998 Microsoft's customer feedback was almost entirely positive. Since the whole world's wrong, and you're right, and that's the way it's always been, who am I to argue? Uh, it might helped if you upped the dosage of those pills, Bill.
As the majority of hobbyists must be aware, most of you steal your software.
And you don't? Naturally, those listings taken from the dumpsters were public domain, weren't they? I mean, the authors haven't complained yet, have they? The Spyglass issue was just a little misunderstanding? How about the drive doubler software? And, my gosh, doesn't Money resemble something Microsoft once had a look at the source code for awfully closely? Come clean, Bill, tell us the whole story!
What hobbyist can put 3-man years into programming, finding all bugs, documenting his product and distribute for free?
Linus Torvalds.
Next question? (-:
I would appreciate letters from any one who [...] has a suggestion or comment.
Ever your humble servant. (-:
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
That thou art blamed shall not be thy defect,
For slander's mark was ever yet the fair;
The ornament of beauty is suspect,
A crow that flies in heaven's sweetest air.
So thou be good, slander doth but approve
Thy worth the greater, being woo'd of time;
For canker vice the sweetest buds doth love,
And thou present'st a pure unstained prime.
Thou hast pass'd by the ambush of young days,
Either not assail'd or victor being charged;
Yet this thy praise cannot be so thy praise,
To tie up envy evermore enlarged:
If some suspect of ill mask'd not thy show,
Then thou alone kingdoms of hearts shouldst owe.
------------------------
Anonymous William Shakespeare LIVES!
Al Gore maybe?
FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
If the first guys to make free software patented the process they'd be rolling in cash by now. :)
It's turtles all the way down.
the article shows the beginnings of the debate over the concept of whether or not software should be free.
It goes back WAY farther than that...
The earliest piece I'm aware of is an article in Communications of the ACM by Bernie Galler. In it he complained that the price being charged for a piece of software (I think it was $75) was greater than the cost of duplicating the card deck and mailing it. He warned that this could lead to the concept of software as a product, programming as a profession, and trade secret restrictions impeeding the free flow of software technology development.
I don't recall the exact date of the article. But it was in the same issue as Djikstra's "GOTO Considered Harmful" article which was the origin of the whole "structured programming" flap, and structured programming was well developed and in vogue by the end of the 1960s.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
not very nice at all apparently. im sure she must have a big brain, but i'd still rather have a harem.
"I am a warrior, and information is my weapon..."
>can put 3-man years into programming, finding all bugs, documenting his product
AND
>Now we have 4K, 8K, EXTENDED, ROM and DISK BASIC. T
Perhaps this is the problem with present bug-ridden Microsoft code. Are you still spending 3 man years per 8K of generated code? If you did, then your firm might actually have a product worth paying for, rather than the present low-level of quality Microsoft is famous for.
If it was said on slashdot, it MUST be true!
In fact, Mr. Dompier has saved a copy of a handwritten letter from Mr. Gates at about that same time, thanking him for helping find and fix bugs in the program.
I wonder if Dompier was paid for his effort? In his letter, Gates makes a big deal about the quality of the software and the costs of producing it.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't he just port code that was already in the Public Domain? Many people at the time saw him as the thief, for selling what they said wasn't his in the first place.
If it's in the public domain you can modify it and sell your modified version. That doesn't stop anybody from using the UNmodified version.
At the time in question, Copyright had not been extended to computer software. (That debate came much later.) Neither had patent. The only protection available was trade secret. Once the cat's out of the bag on a trade secret it's public domain, and the only person the former owner of the secret has any claim against is the guy who opened the bag.
A thing to remember: Copyright, patent, trademark, service mark, and the rest of the "Intellectual Property" pantheon (except for trade secret) are NOT codifications of a "natural" right. They are the creation of government action, pure and simple.
This is not a claim that they're WRONG, or that creators SHOULDN'T have such "rights". That's a separate issue. But at the time, they DIDN'T have them. Bill was whistling into the wind when he complained about the hobbiests (except for the one who made the first copy) "stealing" his work.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Curiously, /. always seems to know who I am, and I generally leave cookies turned off. Hmm...
Paper tape. Hmm. A better encrytion method than the Cue Cat's.
...and he's still getting positive feedback. Developers even go so far as to write ILOVEYOU...
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
If I ask a lawyer a question, even though it costs him nothing to produce the answer, I would still expect to have to pay.
I don't see why our expectations about software and programmers are any different.
EOF
I really like that, Micro-soft. The guy sounds like T. Herman Zweibel, publisher emeritus of The Onion (e.g. see this). Come to think of it, there are quite a few resemblances.
Long, long before Bill Gates, Altair, or the Homebrew Computer Club, there was Digital
,
Equipment Corporation's PDP-8 series of machines. To program these beasties, one
had a choice of the "switch register" (which gave many people, myself included, a permanent
callus on their index finger), or the noisy KSR-33 Teletypewriter, with handy paper-tape
reader attached.
DEC sold all sorts of software for the PDP-8 series, but I never saw a single paper tape with a
professional-looking label in years of work/play/messing about. Draw your own conclusions...
Programs were considered a way to show one's mental superiority, so everyone was happy to
make copies of their code for others. We felt complimented when asked for copies.
How did programmers earn a living? Well, not off EACH OTHER, that's for sure!
The concept of "free software" was nothing more than a basis for earning prestige among one's peers.
When "paying work" came knocking, one could be sure that multiple people would mention YOUR name
as being a good (perhaps the best!) person for that job. In short, we made money off COMPANIES
and gave freely to each other, not only of our time, but also of our code.
Bill Gates saw programmers themselves as "a market", and contributed NOTHING to the community of programmers, but instead, made himself known with his whining little letter, assuring himself of, FROM DAY ONE , the distain of both his betters and peers, if not actual dinner reservations in Hell.
His letter was widely circulated, greeted with snorts of disbelief, and ignored. The general consensus was that he had nothing to whine about, given that his so-called BASIC was worthless - it would not run "Star-Trek", "WUMPUS", or "Adventure" (the 3 most popular games of the day) due to massive bugs in the code. (Funny how so little has changed in the decades that have gone by...)
Sheesh... do you twenty-somethings think that you invented "open source"?
No way, you kids just wrapped all sorts of (silly) rules and (endless) talk around a situation that worked very well long before most of your parents were high school graduates.
Science is the art of infallibility, perpetrated upon non-scientists
Basic was an existing programming language when Bill & Paul used $40,000.00 worth of Harvard's computer time to port it to the Altair. How much did thewy pay Basic's creator or Harvard.
http://channel.nytimes .com/2000/09/18/technology/18BASI.html
My impression from reading the book _Hard Drive_, is that Gates and his cohort misappropriated time on a computer at Harvard to develop their Basic interpreter. If so, then it really was not rightfully theirs either, imo. Moto Man
On the other hand the closed/secret side has MS Office and most computer games.
Much as I like playing Railroad Tycoon, I don't think its enough to outweigh the rest. Other people do not agree. The problem is that they, like lawyers, charge such large amounts for information that was free to them (lawyers and programmers are trained with library books and Journals, IME) that they can "pull the ladder up after themselves". Gates (or his money) has been instrumental in spreading the cloak of IP over the industry. While using the net, the web, the published algorithms of people interested in spreading ideas and all the rest of the "free software" movement to help the great Satan^H^H^H^H^H programmer along, of course.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
Some goofy-looking fake PDP8 code for the greybeards in the house (to be sung to the tune of "The Way We Were"):
01.05 T !" TOWERS OF HANOI."!;E
01.10 A " NO. OF DISKS? "N,!
01.20 F I=1,N;S SS(I)=I
01.30 S SO=1;S SI=3
01.40 S NO=N;S NI=N;S I=0
01.45 A "MOVES#0, PLOTS#1 ? "MOVE,!
01.46 IF (MOVE)ERR,1.47; DO 23
01.47 ASK "AUTO#0, MANUAL#1 ? ",A,!
01.50 I (-A)5.1;D 2;T !!"DONE !"!!;Q
02.20 I [SS]ER,2.95;
02.30 S I=I+1;S NO(I)=NO;S SO(I)=SO;S SI(I)=SI
02.50 S SI=6-SO-SI;S NO=NO-1;D 3;S TE(I)=NI;D 2
02.60 S SI=SI(I);S NO=NO+1;D 3; D 6
02.70 S SO=6-SO-SI;S NO=TE(I); DO 3; DO 2
02.80 S SI=SI(I);S SO=SO(I);S NO=NO(I);S I=I-1
02.90 R
02.95 D 3;D 6;R
03.10 S NI=N
03.20 I [SS((SI-1)*N+NI)]ER,3.3;S NI=NI-1;G 3.2
03.30 R
05.10 A ? SO NO ?!? SI NI ?!;D 6
05.30 S A=0
05.40 F I=1,N*2;S A=A+SS(I)
05.50 I (-A) 5.1;T !"WELL DONE!"!;Q
06.10 S DO=(SO-1)*N+NO
06.20 S DI=(SI-1)*N+NI
06.30 S SS(DI)=SS(DO)
06.40 S SS(DO)=0
06.50 I (MOVE)E,6.7;DO 23;R
06.70 T !%2,?SO, NO,!SI, NI,?!
23.10 F J=1,N;T !;F K=0,70;DO 23.3
23.20 T !!!!;R
23.30 IF [K-15+SS(J)*2]23.6;IF [-K+15+SS(J)*2]23.6;T "#
23.60 IF [K-35+SS(J+N)*2]23.7;IF [-K+35+SS(J+N)*2]23.7;T "#
23.70 IF [K-55+SS(J+N+N)*2]23.8;IF [-K+55+SS(J+N+N)*2]23.77;T "#
23.77 S K=100;R
23.80 T " "
lamenessfilter lamenessfilter lamenessfilter lamenessfilter lamenessfilter lamenessfilter lamenessfilter lamenessfilter lamenessfilter lamenessfilter lamenessfilter lamenessfilter lamenessfilter lamenessfilter lamenessfilter lamenessfilter lamenessfilter lamenessfilter lamenessfilter lamenessfilter lamenessfilter lamenessfilter lamenessfilter lamenessfilter lamenessfilter lamenessfilter lamenessfilter lamenessfilter lamenessfilter lamenessfilter lamenessfilter lamenessfilter lamenessfilter lamenessfilter lamenessfilter lamenessfilter lamenessfilter lamenessfilter lamenessfilter lamenessfilter lamenessfilter lamenessfilter lamenessfilter lamenessfilter lamenessfilter lamenessfilter lamenessfilter lamenessfilter lamenessfilter lamenessfilter lamenessfilter lamenessfilter lamenessfilter lamenessfilter lamenessfilter lamenessfilter lamenessfilter lamenessfilter lamenessfilter lamenessfilter lamenessfilter lamenessfilter lamenessfilter lamenessfilter lamenessfilter lamenessfilter lamenessfilter lamenessfilter lamenessfilter lamenessfilter lamenessfilter lamenessfilter lamenessfilter lamenessfilter lamenessfilter lamenessfilter lamenessfilter lamenessfilter lamenessfilter lamenessfilter lamenessfilter lamenessfilter lamenessfilter lamenessfilter lamenessfilter lamenessfilter lamenessfilter lamenessfilter lamenessfilter
Your mouth is like Columbus Day.
Here is the response you have been waiting for: Windows SUX, Linux RULZ! Yes, that's it!
What's Play Station, but a crummy Game Boy knock off? WoooHooo! Now we're talkin!
I hope you spend all your money on Bill's Buggy Shit. How about this? I'll pretend I'm a vendor, walk down to CompUSA and buy you an nice fat copy of Win2k. You can then pay me for it. Wow, I can earn some money off a sucker. Better yet, why don't you just give me the money, I kick you in the balls and we call it even?
In the imortal noise of T&P, "AH, HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA, AH-HA!"
> Otherwise, for every cabinet the carpenter
> makes, he would charge exactly the same
> amount as that weight of logs would cost
> from the lumbar yard.
No, s/he's charging money for the finished product -- the cost of which presumably reflects the cost of raw materials, the cost of the work put into it, and market considerations.
In a way, this is the cost of putting an actual cabinet in the hands of a customer. (A single usable instance of a cabinet.) For a carpenter, the cost is the same for every cabinet. For a programmer, the cost of the first copy of software is very high, but is virtually zero for all subsequent copies. The programmer should therefore be paid a high amount of money for the first copy, and virtually nothing for all subsequent copies.
Your seem unable to realize this fundamental difference, and fear that some sort of anarchy ("Why do we have to pay for ANYTHING AT ALL?" whimper wail whimper) will tear down nations should we fail to pay fees for each copy of software. Society will not be ripped apart at the sinews; rather, the cost of software copies will come to reflect the respective cost of their creations.
-------
"Whatever happened to fair use?"
-- Duff-Man
Well, making software looks more like inventing the notion of "cabinet" (version 1.0) than producing one.
Software is a product of the mind, an artistic creation requiring ingenuity, just like imagining a cabinet, inventing the notion of wheel, discovering a geometric property (ex: pythagore theorem).
When was the last time you paid for your license of "Wheel 59.1.218(tm)"??? How much are the royalties on the bible? Who owns the copyright on "Ulysse's odissey"?.
The first time I saw a systematized exposition of the argument that price is linked to work involved was in some work by Karl Marx, probably "The Capital". I felt his reasoning faulty but I couldn't tell why.
Now I see that price is linked to offer and demand, that is, scarcity, as better Slashdotters have said.
__
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Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
I would just like to say that Bill Gates talks about 'innovating' Windows. Although this is an unpleasant mangling of the English language, it shows that they consider Windows the only operating system and therefore in a twisted sense they are innovative. An innovation is either a great new idea or a useful improvement to an existing thing. Windows 98 is an improvement on Windows 95 (less bugs, handy integrated browser) and Win2000 is quite an improvement on NT (although I have had a couple of unexpected automatic reboots - gotta love that feature). So in the world of Windows they are true innovators, only in the whole of the computing world are they bad implementors of good ideas. The Linux community are good implementors of good ideas, that's the real difference.
> Microsoft doesn't really care if you
> pirate their software for home use.
And I'm sure they'd rather you use a pirated WinME than a paid-for Linux distribution. Anything that promotes the automatic association of computers with Windows and Office can only do them good.
The downside of piracy is that it doesn't encourage development of the GNU philosophy - why use StarOffice when you can burn a copy of Office 2000? The only factor involved here would be the desire to use free or OS software. MS will win nearly all the time. This keeps the user base - legal or otherwise - MS-focused, while they work on ways of making sure users WILL have to pay for future releases... as, of course, they should, if that's how Microsoft want to do it...
the "killer app" of the day :)) Unless you got the Scelbi "Galaxy" game and typed in an assembler listing. I paid $150 for 4K BASIC in '76 (lets see, that's what, 3.66 cents/byte?) And it still wasn't up to 'Trek - no $trings! And no mass storage either.
The debate over "whether software should be free" is a product of faulty logic that the news media in particular seem to fall for; what amounts to a "koan" - an unanswerable question you can always make banner headlines out of; "Monks Fiercly Divided Over What One Hand Clapping Sounds Like" just like the the whether-guns-or-people-kill debate. Fact is, software is 'owned' by the person that writes it. If you write code, you may choose to GPL it or choose to sell it, one copy per cpu, thank you. Whether BillG "stole" his code from a university dumpster is idle speculation and baselsss accusation untill you come up with some real solid evidence. People arguing over whether "software should be free" is like debating over what we should do with Robins Limo, or the local collective debating what crops are going to be planted on YOUR farm and family property. Don't you folks dare try to socialize MY code or take MY property or someone's going to get hurt.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Technical Design Labs published "TDL Z-80 BASIC" in 1977. I remember hearing that MS had 'appropriated' TDL's BASIC -- after inspecting the source and declining to license it. When MS BASIC appeared on the market, I compared it with TDL's. Imagine my surprise when undocumented errors in TDL's BASIC had identical counterparts in the MS product. Draw your own conclusions.
If you've ever seen the movie, Pirates Of The Silicon Valley (and this is how I know anything about the Altair) Bill Gates and a friend of his wrote the programming language for this pretty odd computer. Apparently however, before his friend brought it to the owner of the Altair, Gates remembered he didn't write a boot loader. Not important information, just funny. In either case, it's a good movie to watch, this subject just made me think about it. Steve Jobs was an asshole. :)
"It's here, but no one wants it." - The Sugar Speaker
Before Gates commoditized the distribution of software in shrink-wrapped boxes, all software was open source.
I worked for a hospital where we paid McCormick & Dodge for an accounting package and we, (the entire client base, not just the hospital,) regularly fixed bugs, made contributions and otherwise tighened things up.
It was COBOL and could have been compiled into obscurity but we were paying BIG BUCKS and there was no way in Hell we'd have bought the code without the source.
The shrink-wrap and the incredible hutzpah of some very venal people combined with M$ strong-arm sales to the distribution channel is at the root of the virus writers abilities to exploit weaknesses that wouldn't exist for very long if we all could scrutinize the code. (but its mostly crap and they're ashamed to let it out anyway.)
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
I really mean "mass amrket". Almost everything
....
was custom for one site or a small range of
computers and cost Big Bucks.
Then came Apple, Visicalc, Atari
Yeah, Bill has made such a profound mark on the world... No other human has ever pilled so much shit into so many other people's houses, and then become rich for it!
it just runs on in emulation.
The above has links to an Altair emulator complete w/ disk images of BASIC, DISK BASIC, etc plus some popular BASIC games - compiles in Unix, run great.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
What hobbyist can put 3-man years into programming, finding all bugs, documenting his product and distribute for free?
<p>
Linus!
<p>
MarNuke
Herr AC has violated Mr. Gates copyright by posting the letter here. Now Bill calls the RIAA, they supoena the slashdot ip records . . .
[duck]
In fairness, there have been three (3) innovations from microsoft:
1) Altair basic. Face it: there was nothing vaguely similar before this. Yes, there were basic dialects, but writing and marketing to the hobbiest was something new.
2) The usable footnote (1984). In Word 1.0, footnotes on microcomputers became usable for the first time. Prefviously, you had to do it just like a typewriter, and if you changed your text, you had to manually move the footnote. However, there were pagination errors that would sometimes leave a blank half-page or more so that the footnote and pointer would appear on teh same page. I was stunned to ifnd this bug still existed a year ago . . .
3) Bob. Yes, microsoft bob. Innovative, yes, but . . .
As for the windows interface, I have yet to see anything in it that wasn't available in the multifinder (macos 5), introduced in 1987, along with a couple of $20 shareware extensions . . .
Linux isn't necessarily intended for non-geeks. If you're not going to descend to the shell and learn how to do things (like build software) then you don't need linux. You can get along okay with Win2k or similar.
Now, I know a lot of people want to bring linux to the masses, but I don't really see why. Yes, it's a keen operating system. Yes, it does nearly everything better than windoze does, except for one thing: appeal to the masses. Windows provides an experience where everything is sanitized and conformitized, and you don't have to use your brain so much to figure it out. People who actually forget what right-clicking is don't belong in bash.
My point is that Microsoft is hardly responsible for making life easy. They didn't invent basically anything, except perhaps crappy software support. (Rumors insist that if your tape of Altair/Micro $haft basic was bad, it was not replaced.) Everything they make is a ripoff of something else. They usually add some functionality, mostly by tying it into their office framework, but they also make it more bloated and buggy than the original product they have assimilated or emulated.
I don't know why you decided to make this a conversation about linux, since there's basically no parallel between providing a BASIC interpreter for a system and providing a complete user environment with a number of interpreters including BASIC, but I'll continue to bite, anyway. Linux has all the pieces there. You can install almost everything a user needs via RPM. Installation instructions tell you how to go about installing software (Which these days is usually as simple as unpacking, entering a directory, and typing "make install".) But to get the type of functionality that the average person gets from windows, you never have to compile anything. Install redhat with gnome or KDE, and staroffice. You're done.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Geez, this is a troll, nothing more. Just like the other sex stories and the "Christian Movie reviews" ones. All they want is make us techie geeks look like lunatics/perverts/criminals/whatever. DON'T ANSWER THESE IDIOTS!
Well, maybe that's a problem where you're concerned, but as long as I'm getting the tools I need without paying for them, I'm happy.
Now, that's not a strictly true statement. I do pay for software occasionally, when something really deserves it. I've even paid for microsoft software; I bought a copy of Flightsim for the Mac way back when. MS Flight Simulator really is/was one of the best around, maybe the best. It ran pretty reasonably on a Macintosh IIci, too. I paid for CRT, but refuse to pay the $35 more for ssh support. Maybe if they invented the protocol themselves. I paid for Discplay 4, because it was the only decent CD player with CDDB support at the time (send as well as receive) and then it got rolled into some crappy-as-all-hell all-in-one audio solution, which was free. And shitty. So I guess I'm less tempted to pay for shareware now.
The bottom line in my opinion is that Microsoft doesn't deserve to have money from me. They're the standard, and if I want to communicate with other people, I pretty much have to use their software. I haven't tried staroffice recently but I wasn't too pleased with it in the way-back. Of course, I don't think I actually have any Office components installed on my home machine. I do have WinME there, but since you have to have it to play the majority of games, I don't feel obligated to pay for it.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The idea seems to be to blur the distinction between sharing your own work (obviously laudable) and sharing someone else's work without their permission (obviously unethical, and folks generally knew that even in 1975). It also tries to oversimplify all the complex debates that are going on right now into a simple black and white question of whether "computer software and digital information should be bought and sold or freely shared".
Thus to me, the article reads like a subtle propaganda piece for the groups today who are trying to extend their rights under copyright beyond all reasonable bounds using DMCA, UCITA, etc. By citing a past case where people were clearly stealing and calling that the start of the debate, the article suggests that today's debate is not a legitimate discussion about where copyright ends and fair use rights begin, but simply a debate about whether or not stealing is OK. Since Joe NYT Reader probably doesn't think that stealing is OK, this tends to push him towards one side of the debate...
Well, I think that Economics is dealing with scarce resources.
Marx actually linked value to time involved. So if I need 2 hours and you need 1, your product has more value. That's anti-progress.
Besides, Marx did not link value to utility (from memory). If I spend 3 hours carrying stones from A to B and another 3 carrying them from B to A, I have created more Marx-value than if I just do nothing, but the result is the same, stones in A.
If you want to introduce utility, you need something to measure, a price.
You can either evaluate it according to some criteria (planned economy) or use the free market (supply and demand) to determine it.
Planned economy is very difficult to plan right.
Free market is not perfect as well, but seems to work better.
Or how would you deal with scarce resources?
__
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Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
for theft - your damn bloody straight we're going to fight for reasonable capitalist property laws. In all my years I've heard tons of excuses for ip theft - the "it's not worth what they're charging, therefore I can use it w/o paying", etc etc ad nauseum. These wealth redistribution socialists are no better than barbarians storming the neighboring tribe to rape, loot and plunder, all the while thinking it's their divine right, or blathering about all property being transient so gimme-gimme-gimme.
:) - such as the non-trivial floating point math (which was the big thing MITS BASIC brought to the Altair - which MUST have been useful to have been pirated so much!) This is a non-trivial task, it takes a lot of concentration and effort many hours a day, intense studying of these lists to find mistakes and not a few asperain bottles, to make a list of instructions to does something useful; what's unfair is when the coder does this expecting a certain set of ip laws to be in effect to AT LEAST pay the rent and buy groceries, and have exployment like the fellows working at the shipyard etc, and then along comes this band of barbarians who think that just because something CAN be copied for pennies that it should be absolutely free for cost of copying, damn the author who expects compensation! In the end it's often not the author but the honest customers who pay for theft, just like a store pays for shoftlifting by charging more that the honest customers pay. While we may balk at working for a company that wants to take ownership of any code we write, could you imagine living in a communist country where everything you produce, corn, beans, is considered state property?? (shudder) For some reason, I beleive(know) that standard human nature will always take over and those whose unfortunate job it is to redistribute the wealth 'fairly' usually end up with the most of it! What this leads to eventually is not a rich, robust society, but a bust society with very little incentive to work at all, since you end up producing X value of goods and receiving X-S value back from the central planning committee, it's just slaver all over again. Corrpution (theft, bribery, etc) in a capitalist society also reduces that incentive. It's AMAZING the crazy and creative things people will do to obtain financial freedom (just look at Hollywood!).
Essentially, creating something, whether writing code or building a house is an exertion of effort, work, taking pains to accomplish something such as farming, building shelter, digging water wells, hauling irrigation pipes, weeding, etc. in expectation of harvesting a useful crop to feed the family and sell for cash to buy a frying pan. If I take the blood, sweat and tears to cut down a stand of trees and hew them into lumber and make a shelter to keep a stock of corn out of the weather, then I OWN THAT BARN, I made it, and have the right to kick out any transients who are looking for free shelter at someone else's expense. Likewise with someone who perceives an unfulfilled market niche (and 'itch' experienced by people who DONT CODE who might be willing to pay a fee for a coder to scratch) or a better way to do a job and sets about making a 'program' comprised of a list of fundamental microprocessor instructions which when executed by a microprocessor performs a useful data processing task (can't BELEIVE I have to define "write code"
All in all, what part of a civilized economy do you not understand, or should we all just run around in a giant anarchiac free for all grabbing all the 'transient property' we can get by overpowering the owners?
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
But isn't a person's time a scarce resource? Especially if that person is skilled and therefore rare?
It depends. To me, a very skillful troll (there are those that make you read the whole post and you realize after you flame that it's all trolling) can employ as much time as ain insightful poster. Both are rare and skilled, but the time used by one has not the same value as the other's (to me). Of course, my criteria are different of those of the Great Troll Conspiracy.
In a market (the moderation system is a bit of a market paying scarce points to scarce good articles), the price tells whose time is valuable and whose should be better wasted or used in another purpose.
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Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu