30th Anniversary of Gates' Letter to HCC

suso writes "30 years ago today, Bill Gates wrote the infamous Open Letter to Hobbyists about licensing of Altair BASIC to the Homebrew Computer Club. Looking back it's interesting to read this emotionally written document as it is probably Gate's first publicly written opinion about licensing software." From the letter: "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."

Comments

Just let time pass...

[Spy der Mann]

And have Microsoft realize their empire on software development is no more. Right now we have enough development tools available or in progress:
MONO (alternative for .NET),
Gambas (alternative for Visual Basic - linux only tho),
KDevelop (for C++ under Linux),
Code::Blocks (for C++ under Windows),
wxPython, DABO (Foxpro alternative, uses wxPython)...

Soon Bill Gates won't have to worry about people stealing his development tools... because NOBODY WILL USE THEM! X-D

Still waiting for the deluge!

[jimmyhat3939]

So, hopefully sometime soon Bill will hire those 10 programmers and start deluging us with great software. We've been wating a long time.