Gates’s open letter forced the hacker community to confront paid versus free software

Evidence

Gates and Allen soon realized that many homebrew hobbyists were using their version of BASIC without paying for it. Gates addressed this issue in an “Open Letter to Hobbyists” that was printed in the Altair newsletter, the Homebrew Computer Club newsletter, and various other publications. It read, in part: “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?” The bitingly sarcastic letter caused a commotion in the hobbyist community and codified an explicit conflict between the ideals of the Hacker Ethic and the realities of proprietary software. Ideally, the BASIC source code should be distributed so anyone could use it. But according to Gates and Allen, BASIC was their project and they deserved compensation. — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, 73

Categorization

• XREF: The piracy/openness tension here echoes today’s creator-economy debates over platforms monetizing user labor — connects to the book’s later argument. — connects to: Microsoft was founded out of the homebrew hobbyist hacker scene — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity,…, 72

Broader Connections

• Microsoft was founded out of the homebrew hobbyist hacker scene #corroborates (0.78) — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, 72