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"Most of you steal your software"
- orangethirty 14y agoBill Gates sure is a great marketer. Igniting this issue in such direct way made people pay attention. No wonder he was able to build MS into what it was.
- joemcm 14y agoSuch a great precursor to what goes on nowadays with music and such.
- tnuc 14y agoExcept the record labels would rather hand out huge fines and jail sentences.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- dclowd9901 14y agoAnd, yet, file decompression utilities continue to exist and are maintained.
- fossuser 14y agoThere was a good write up of the context surrounding this letter in Steven Levy's book, Hackers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hackers:_Heroes_of_the_Computer_Revolution http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hackers:_Heroes_of_the_Computer...). It pissed off seemingly everyone in the community and seemed to be against the spirit of what the hackers were doing at the time (writing and sharing code). I recall another programmer being irritated by the letter and writing his own basic interpreter and asking $5 for it (which was far less than what Gates was asking). Book is worth reading for the historical context of computing if you weren't around to see it. #### Edit [Relevant part of wikipedia page]: Tiny BASIC: Altair BASIC was an interpreter that translated instructions from the BASIC programming language into assembly instructions that the Altair 8800 could understand. It was developed by Bill Gates and Paul Allen, the founders of Micro-soft, specifically for the Altair 8800 and it would fit in 4K of memory. Unlike previous hackers and against the Hacker Ethic, Micro-Soft and MITS felt that people should pay for BASIC just like they paid for any add-on card. Many hackers had in fact put in orders for BASIC, but still had to wait for the order to be shipped. During a show put up by MITS, someone got hold of and copied a paper tape containing Altair BASIC. The tapes were duplicated and passed around freely before the commercial product was even shipped to customers. Gates and Allen did not appreciate this turn of events since they were actually paid commission for each copy of BASIC that MITS sold. Gates responded by writing an open letter titled “Open Letter to Hobbyists” that considered the sharing of software to be theft. Tiny BASIC was a similar interpreter that would fit in only 2K of memory as it supported a subset of the functionality of Micro-Soft BASIC (which itself was a subset of Dartmouth BASIC). It was developed by Dick Whipple and John Arnold in Tyler, Texas and distributed freely in PCC magazine. Many more people sent in improvements and programs developed in Tiny BASIC to be published. This eventually led to the creation of Dr. Dobb's Journal edited by Jim Warren that distributed free or very inexpensive software in response to Gates' claims of theft. Tom Pittman was someone else who did not take kindly to Gates' words. He wrote a version of Tiny BASIC for the Motorola 6800 microprocessor. Although he sold it to AMI for $3,500, he retained the rights to sell it to others and decided to charge only $5 for it. He received many orders and even money from people who had already gotten a copy and simply wanted to pay him for his efforts. Pittman also wrote the essay “Deus Ex Machina” on the AI and hardware hackers and what tied them together. Lee Felsenstein and Bob Marsh banded together to create a fully contained computer for an issue of Popular Electronics that they called SOL that sold for under a thousand dollars. ####
- rvkennedy 14y agoIt's a pity that the then Micro-soft did not have copy protection technology - if they had, they might never have established such a strong foothold in the market, and the history of computing would have been quite different.
- zdw 14y agoYeah, they look like they've really been hurting for years now... (oh come one people, downvotes? You can't tell the OP is attempting humor, and I'm trying to acknowledge that?)
- saraid216 14y agoFrom HN Guidelines: > Resist complaining about being downmodded. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.
- DigitalJack 14y agoResist quoting from HN Guidelines. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- Confusion 14y agoTo me it's quite obviously sarcasm based on a counterfactual and I don't see how one could interpret it otherwise.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- shmerl 14y agoYes, this is a famous letter which can be considered a foundation of Microsoft's historic hostility to any open technologies.
- codeulike 14y agoIts just a letter complaining about a product being pirated. It only shocked people because the idea of end-consumers paying for software was novel then.
- shmerl 14y agoThe point is that it demonstrates the core ideas which Bill Gates put in action in Microsoft. I.e. aggressive IP methodology.
- slurgfest 14y agoPiracy is not the same as "open technologies" in any way. In fact, the latter prevents the former (if I settle on GIMP instead of pirating Photoshop...)
- shmerl 14y agoIf you read it carefully it's not just about piracy. It's against sharing (which in open source happens without any piracy). His basic idea - sharing prevents good software from being written. I.e. only closed paid model can be incentive to create good software. It's the cornerstone idea of Microsoft and is very in line with their historic hatred towards open technologies which they always saw as a threat (and obviously not because of piracy). It also is in line with their aggressive approach to enforcing patents and copyrights.
- nohorse 14y agoMaking money writing software? Absurd! Next you'll be telling me rich guys are finding young startup talent and convincing them to partner up so they can introduce them to even richer guys. You smart people would never fall for such nonsense.
- Wingman4l7 14y agoWikipedia has a pretty extensive article on this famous letter: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Letter_to_Hobbyists http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Letter_to_Hobbyists
- mct 14y agoAn interesting line from that article, which I hadn't previously seen: > In early 1976 ads for its Apple I computer, Apple Inc made the claims that "our philosophy is to provide software for our machines free or at minimal cost"[23] and "yes folks, Apple BASIC is Free"[24]
- tonyedgecombe 14y agoJoel Spolsky had an interesting article on this idea [1], he said "smart companies try to commoditize their products' complements." [1] http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/StrategyLetterV.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/StrategyLetterV.html
- speeder 14y agoInteresting how he predicts the reason for Sun demise.
- thebluesky 14y agoNot really a prediction if it's something he was already observing.
- johnpowell 14y ago>Now we have 4K, 8K, EXTENDED, ROM and DISK BASIC. I guess old habits die hard.
- notJim 14y agoAre you referring to the obtuse names?
- Confusion 14y agoProbably to the tendency to produce n slightly different versions in an attempt to segmentize the market.
- vidarh 14y agoThat actually made sense when a difference of a few KB meant a difference between whether or not you'd be able to fit your own application into memory. There was at least one early BASIC extension, for example, where you could pick the commands you wanted "a la carte", with number of bytes required for each one of them listed, to pack the ones that were most important for you to fit into a specific size. You'd pay for the size you chose.
- slajax 14y agoI think he would say now that this letter was rather short sighted. It seems the theft of basic by hobbyists may have lead to the catalyst needed for his software to dominate the commercial PC market some years later. Clearly it wasn't just him developing software for these computers. I wonder how they attributed licensing to it. Or if there even was such a thing at that time. Funny how some things change, yet stay the same. Glad the OP posted this.
- icambron 14y agoI readily grant that there's a huge amount of selection bias to this, but from this remove, it's difficult not to read this as, "pirate all the software you please, we'll still end up as billionaires."
- walid 14y agoCan't agree more. I still have to see a software vendor out of business because of piracy. In fact, piracy is usually an indication of strong sales and lack of piracy speaks a lot of how interested people are in your software.
- slurgfest 14y agoRight, if a failed company (even one which failed because of piracy) had a letter like this, you wouldn't be reading it.
- icambron 14y agoMy only reservation on that line of argument is that, apparently, it "caused quite a stir at the time". But yes, the selection bias here is real enough.
- nannasin28 14y agoas it supported a subset of the functionality of Micro-Soft BASIC.. http://www.hqew.net http://www.hqew.net
- alan_cx 14y ago... and as a result poor Bill has lived in total poverty, only to die of scurvy in a slum. His business died with out trace and he never been heard of since. A tragic story. Yes, bad hobbyists. Point being, despite all the piracy, there is still some money to be made. The complaint is that such folk are not making enough money. See, Bill should be twice or 3 times as rich. Man, he's really losing out. Of course then we have to deal with the age old assumption that every person with a pirated copy would have paid for it. Which is, er, optimistic, at best. IMHO, the loss is negligible. All they the copyright owner gets in reality is the satisfaction that not so many people use their product, but those who do pay. I'm not that happy at hitting Bill with this as he is one of the filthy rich people who actually uses his accumulated wealth for good causes. Which is ideal really.
- ghjm 14y agoBut he wasn't, or anything close to it, when he wrote this letter.
- rbanffy 14y agoHe wasn't anything close to poverty either.
- OGinparadise 14y agoHe wasn't anything close to poverty either. OK, if you aren't poor, give me $10K then. According to me, you have enough!
- rbanffy 14y agoThat, in 1955 dollars, would be about 1% of the trust fund one of his grandparents established for him. Still, I think he would resist your offer. What would you do with US$10K?
- wglb 14y agoHe came from a quite well off family. And used that to his advantage at the beginning of his business career.
- meaty 14y agoThe irony is that Microsoft made it even easier to steal stuff by forcing complete market dominance. It's easy to steal if everything is compatible and connected i.e the DOS/Windows monoculture.
- nextparadigms 14y agoImagine if there would've been a way to force 100% of people who got Windows in China, India, and other poor countries all over the world to pay up $100 or more for their copy. If that would've been at all possible, I think Linux would've had higher than 50% market share in the PC market today. For that kind of poor countries, Windows licenses were and still are prohibitively expensive for the vast majority of their citizens, so if being forced to buy Windows instead of pirating it, I think most would've just gone with Linux, and its adoption would've exploded within a few years, from the moment everyone in poor countries had to make that decision. Therefore software support from the big vendors would've arrived relatively quickly. Unfortunately for us (and fortunately for Microsoft), there was no way to force people into that decision, so we were left with a Windows monopoly for the past 2 decades.
- renanbirck 14y agoThis is the major problem I have while trying to tell people about Linux (and other open-source software). It's hard to argue against "my [proprietary software] copy was free" - when effectively, it was, since nothing will happen to them.
- narcissus 14y agoI read once where Bill Gates predicted that eventually people would buy software and that the hardware would be free. I can't remember where I read it ('Business at the Speed of Light', maybe?) but it stuck with me as just, well, ridiculous. Anyway, the fact that he says "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." kind of makes me wonder how he ever ended up with that thought I mentioned at the start. And I know it sounds crazy that he would ever think that: that's why it stuck with me I guess.
- bconway 14y agoI read once where Bill Gates predicted that eventually people would buy software and that the hardware would be free. I can't remember where I read it ('Business at the Speed of Light', maybe?) but it stuck with me as just, well, ridiculous. Have you looked at any carrier's web site recently? Tons of $0 full-featured Android smartphones, and tons of apps for sale (subsidized by service fees, of course). We're already there.
- martinced 14y agoYou conveniently left out that there are way more $$$ smartphones and tons of apps for FREE. Even inside walled gardens. Not to mention the desktop and laptop space where you buy your hardware (and OS if you're not using a free one like Linux) but then there are a lot of free apps.
- narcissus 14y agoI guess when I read it I didn't think "hardware is free as in you'll be paying for a contract of service where the cost of that service includes the cost of the hardware". I mean, if we're to be able to redefine 'actual' costs like that, maybe my house is free... it's just included in the cost of my bank sending me a statement every month. I do see your point, though: it definitely seems that way, but surely nobody can argue that the production cost of one more piece of hardware is more 'free' than that of a piece of software.
- sesqu 14y ago
- moccajoghurt 14y agoDon't review the letter from today's perspective. Bill Gates didn't know that his work will spread over the world and he will become one of the richest persons alive. He didn't know that there will be a huge open source community in the future, where it is normal to develop software for free. All he knew is that he was working fulltime on something for three years and wasn't payed for it. For me this letter is just a snapshot of the past with an understandable point of view.
- hawleyal 14y agoI disagree. Stallman was hacking in 1976 and many of his ilk were free software advocates. Gates knew what he was doing. He derived his work from others, but denied others the same leeway.
- laumars 14y agoExcept, the hobbyist community back then was even further removed from commercialisation than the open source market is today. The hobbyist community back then was based around clubs of people sharing their achievements; the computers they built, software they'd written and any neat tricks they'd invented (like using the electrical interference of the original Altar to play a tune on a radio http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgYhVnmeWrk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgYhVnmeWrk ). The hobbyist community was very much driven by sharing ideas and code. This is why people got annoyed at that letter. It not only flew against everything the community was built around, but also made some heavy criticisms about their members as well. When you review that letter in the context of the community is was directed at and the time it was written, it seems even more out of place than it does today.
- jscheel 14y agoIt's amazing, and frankly stupid, how many people try to justify theft. Sorry guys, regardless of what utopian ideals of OSS you have, and I have them too, you must respect the creator's wishes. If they ask you to pay for the software, then you MUST pay for the software. Anything else is theft. Let's say you are a freelance developer. Do you think for one second that it would be ok for your clients to let you do all the work, then take your code and not pay you? I mean, knowledge should be free, right? Screw the fact that you built the software with the expectation of getting paid for your hard work. It's one thing to create something with the intention of sharing it with the world. It's an entirely different thing for anybody to justify stealing what you have done.
- monochromatic 14y agoI agree with your sentiment, but it's not actually "theft." More like "copyright infringement."
- TheCapn 14y agoWe all understand what is being discussed here. We don't need to argue semantics over what it means to obtain something you didn't pay for (but should have). It seems that the tech community stands adamantly behind the "copyright infringement isn't theft" mantra but in reality the moral crime is taking something you weren't entitled to. Our actions don't really seem to consider the state of the original product making the difference between "theft" and "copyright infringement" because it is not concerning to us. For the developer/distributor/publisher/artist or whomever is expecting a cut from sales the result is the same: they lost a part of their wage. Admittedly I've done my share of piracy but now that I spend a good chunk of my free time releasing software or writing code I have stopped; it feels kind of shitty to see something taken without any regard for your hardships. Hell, as a result I even go out of my way to make sure developers are paid their dues by purchasing almost any app I use. If I come to expect others to pay/donate for my effort it is quite hypocritical to not do the same as a consumer.
- IgorPartola 14y ago
- cafard 14y ago"The value of the computer time we have used exceeds $40,000." Pardon me, but wasn't a fair bit of that Harvard's computing power, ergo not directly paid for by Gates et al.?
- STRML 14y agoI would assume that's why it was worded the way it was, instead of "We have spent in excess of $40,000 on computer time."