:10:02
makes the time spent on of Altair BASIC
worth less than 2 dollars an hour
:10:07
Why is this?
:10:08
As the majority of hobbyists must be aware,
:10:11
most of you steal your software.
:10:14
Hardware must be paid for but software
is something to share.
:10:17
Who cares if the people who worked
on it get paid?
:10:20
Is this fair?
:10:22
One thing you don't do by stealing software
:10:24
is get back at MITS for some problem
you may have had
:10:27
MITS doesn't make money selling software.
:10:30
One thing you do do is prevent
good software from being written.
:10:34
Who can afford to do professional work for nothing?
:10:37
What hobbyist can put 3-man years into programming,
:10:40
finding all bugs, documenting his product
and distribute it for free?
:10:44
The fact is,
:10:45
no one besides us has invested a lot of money
in hobby software.
:10:50
What about the guys who resell Altair BASIC?
:10:53
Aren't they making money on hobby software?
:10:56
Yes, but those who have been
reported to us may lose in the end.
:11:00
They are the ones who give
hobbyists a bad name,
:11:02
and should be kicked out of any
club meeting they show up at.
:11:06
I would appreciate letters from
anyone who wants to pay up,
:11:10
or has a suggestion or comment.
:11:12
Signed Bill Gates, General partner, Micro-Soft.
:11:17
In the late 70's and early 1980's,
Richard Stallman was
:11:22
doing Artificial Intelligence research and coding
:11:26
at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab.
:11:29
Richard had a number of negative experiences
:11:32
during that period which soured him
:11:34
on the whole idea of commercial software.
:11:36
[ such as? ]
:11:38
uh... some company wanted to work on and
wanted to fix was locked up.
:11:44
and he couldn't get the company that owned
on the code to let him fix it
:11:50
even though it would have been to their advantage to do so.
:11:52
And that put me into a moral dilemma, you see?
:11:56
Because to get one of the modern computers
of the day, which was the early 80's,