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An open letter to hobbyists by Bill Gates (1976)

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Re: An open letter to hobbyists by Bill Gates (1976)

#21

Post by polemic »

vidarh wrote: post #17
pcunite wrote: post #10

My software title "FileSearchEX" is so pirated that I can no longer continue to work on it full time. Indeed, search engines show more "free crack here" links than legitimate ones. Imagine going to the supermarket and having "free" eggs next to the $5 carton ... which would you choose? I know what 90% of them go with.

While it sucks to not be able to work on it full time any more, it boggles my mind that it'd be possible to earn enough from a tool like that to work on it full time for any amount of time in the first place. Not meant as a criticism of you - in fact if you've managed to do that, hats off, clearly you must have done something right with it.

There always have been, and continue to be, people making perfectly good money from this sort of software. I'm not sure why you're surprised, given that people make profitable fart apps for phones, and that it is apparently rational to bury people with money to run any number of fundamentally useless startups.

Re: An open letter to hobbyists by Bill Gates (1976)

#22

Post by [deleted] »

polemic wrote: post #21
vidarh wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While it sucks to not be able to work on it full time any more, it boggles my mind that it'd be possible to earn enough from a tool like that to work on it full time for any amount of time in the first place. Not meant as a criticism of you - in fact if you've managed to do that, hats off, clearly you must have done something right with it.

There always have been, and continue to be, people making perfectly good money from this sort of software. I'm not sure why you're surprised, given that people make profitable fart apps for phones, and that it is apparently rational to bury people with money to run any number of fundamentally useless startups.

[deleted]

Re: An open letter to hobbyists by Bill Gates (1976)

#24

Post by ds9 »

Why was Gates hectoring the hobbyists?

1. The hobbyists had a culture of freely sharing code, which Gates was trying to break up (now known as Linux, Github, C)

2. Software was about 5 years away from Congress making software definitely copyrightable in the US [1] (there had been some court decisions)

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_copyright

Re: An open letter to hobbyists by Bill Gates (1976)

#25

Post by belorn »

> "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?"

Yes who can do professional interpreters for free. Guido van Rossum could not possible put 3-man years into programming, finding all bugs, and document his product for free.

This is after all what this letter is about. An interpreter for a programming language, and the complain is about hobbyist and other non-commercial entities using it without paying money for it.

Re: An open letter to hobbyists by Bill Gates (1976)

#26

Post by goldenkey »

bqpro1 wrote: post #4

Bill Gates experienced in 76 what now is quite obvious: any content + computer = unlimited number of copies.

Photocopiers and books never stopped authors. It's all about the packaging and the full-service offered. A book is nice because it is bound, or comes with extra goodies. If your software is just software, well, step up your sales game.

Re: An open letter to hobbyists by Bill Gates (1976)

#27

Post by Ologn »

Regarding the commercial BASIC project mentioned in this letter - Gates facilitated non-student Allen coming onto the Harvard campus, to use a computer they did not have permission to use for their commercial project. The computer they were using without authorization was one which was being used by the US military. Like Mark Zuckerberg in later years, Gates was called up before the Harvard Ad board for this.

From Paul Allen's book "Idea Man" -

"Returning to Aiken late one night after a fast-food run, we were stopped by the campus police and asked for our IDs...Harvard split the computer’s maintenance costs with the U.S. Defense Department, based on usage. I’d relied on Bill’s password account for my work on the simulator, which ate a lot of processor time. When the January bills came due, Harvard’s share was up conspicuously, with one student the prime culprit: William Henry Gates III. (he appeared before the university’s administrative board that summer...)"

Re: An open letter to hobbyists by Bill Gates (1976)

#28

Post by pfraze »

maxk42 wrote: post #20
johnpmayer wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a better word for using non-free software without a license?

You're only losing opportunity cost. Not COGS. Meanwhile, the user who is pirating your software might be someone for whom the price is prohibitive or who would otherwise not be a user at all if there weren't a cracked alternative. So the the loss to this "theft" is actually much lower because (1) there was no price associated with materials for the software -- it costs you the same to produce one copy as it does a m…

(1) is debatable. The cost of living during development and the loss of potential savings count for price. If you estimate that as, say, 50k for a year-long project, then you need to do 50k of sales to break even on your investment. That shouldn't be a high number for a niche product that gets used, but I think it tends to be in software.

(2) I agree with. It doesn't matter what's best if your product doesn't sell. I think developers need publishing labels (read: app stores) to monetize. Users might pay not pay for note-keeping applet, but they might pay for a fork of it in their GitHub account that's been audited for security & privacy by a reputable publisher. Social P2P software can also be designed to exchange receipts of purchase on connection. Users would be able to disable it, but failing to publish a receipt for software would be awkward in business contexts.

Re: An open letter to hobbyists by Bill Gates (1976)

#29

Post by ollysb »

analog31 wrote: post #19

I think that in the long run, Microsoft profited from piracy. My rationale is that piracy gave a market advantage to the OS with the widest selection of "free" software. So long as folks could copy MS-DOS and Windows software from their workplace, there was little incentive to consider any other OS.

It also cemented their file formats as the industry standard. The network effect is still strong even today.
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