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Don'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
by moccajoghurt 14y ago
Don'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.