"Most of you steal your software" • Hacker News Board

Re: "Most of you steal your software"

#21

Post by johnpowell » Mon, Feb 04, 2013, 6:03 AM UTC

>Now we have 4K, 8K, EXTENDED, ROM and DISK BASIC.

I guess old habits die hard.

Re: "Most of you steal your software"

#22

Post by saraid216 » Mon, Feb 04, 2013, 6:08 AM UTC

DigitalJack wrote: post #13

saraid216 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From HN Guidelines: > Resist complaining about being downmodded. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.

Resist quoting from HN Guidelines. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.

If you were right, then I would.

Re: "Most of you steal your software"

#23

Post by notJim » Mon, Feb 04, 2013, 6:27 AM UTC

johnpowell wrote: post #21

>Now we have 4K, 8K, EXTENDED, ROM and DISK BASIC. I guess old habits die hard.

Are you referring to the obtuse names?

Re: "Most of you steal your software"

#24

Post by slajax » Mon, Feb 04, 2013, 6:33 AM UTC

I 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.

Re: "Most of you steal your software"

#25

Post by icambron » Mon, Feb 04, 2013, 6:42 AM UTC

I 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."

Re: "Most of you steal your software"

#26

Post by nannasin28 » Mon, Feb 04, 2013, 6:43 AM UTC

as it supported a subset of the functionality of Micro-Soft BASIC.. http://www.hqew.net

Re: "Most of you steal your software"

#27

Post by Confusion » Mon, Feb 04, 2013, 6:50 AM UTC

zdw wrote: post #6

rvkennedy wrote: post #5

It'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.

Yeah, 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?)

To me it's quite obviously sarcasm based on a counterfactual and I don't see how one could interpret it otherwise.

Re: "Most of you steal your software"

#28

Post by Confusion » Mon, Feb 04, 2013, 6:52 AM UTC

notJim wrote: post #23

johnpowell wrote: post #21

>Now we have 4K, 8K, EXTENDED, ROM and DISK BASIC. I guess old habits die hard.

Are you referring to the obtuse names?

Probably to the tendency to produce n slightly different versions in an attempt to segmentize the market.

Re: "Most of you steal your software"

#29

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Feb 04, 2013, 7:15 AM UTC

dpcan wrote: post #11

rvkennedy wrote: post #5

It'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.

Yes, I'd love to hear a response from (2013) Bill Gates to this letter. I wonder if he sees this in a different light now? Could the piracy of his early programming language been what started the exponential growth/adoption of all Micro-soft software? If he could, would he go back and release BASIC for free as a springboard to sell other software?

[deleted]

Re: "Most of you steal your software"

#30

Post by tonyedgecombe » Mon, Feb 04, 2013, 7:33 AM UTC

mct wrote: post #19

Wingman4l7 wrote: post #15

Wikipedia has a pretty extensive article on this famous letter: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Letter_to_Hobbyists

An 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]

Joel 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