> Bill Gates, in his "Open Letter to Hobbyists" mentioned earlier, tells
And for those who don't have the issue of BYTE that this appeared in,
here's the letter. Note the "old" address in New Mexico, and the
hyphenated version of "Micro-Soft":
AN OPEN LETTER TO HOBBYISTS
February 3, 1976
By William Henry Gates III
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 some
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
--
Tim Shoppa Email: shoppa_at_trailing-edge.com
Trailing Edge Technology WWW: http://www.trailing-edge.com/
7328 Bradley Blvd Voice: 301-767-5917
Bethesda, MD, USA 20817 Fax: 301-767-5927
Received on Mon Nov 09 1998 - 14:49:54 GMT