An Open Letter to Hobbyists (1976)
archive.nytimes.com
An Open Letter to Hobbyists (1976)
1–10 of 20 posts
Re: An Open Letter to Hobbyists (1976)
#2Bill Gates was 20 years old at the time he wrote this.
Re: An Open Letter to Hobbyists (1976)
#3Interesting window into the history that likely shaped Microsoft's view of customers for decades since then.
I'd say MS still probably has that attitude baked into their company, treating customers as adversaries that need to be protected against.
They are definitely not known for their customer service, but they ARE known for their complex licensing and sometimes heavy-handed enforcement, that I guess maybe one could draw a line back to this as the source.
Re: An Open Letter to Hobbyists (1976)
#4I’m surprised this is on the NYT site, as I thought it was first published in the homebrew computer club newsletter or creative computing.
I do remember that letter, not from 1976 when I was too young to grok it (or even encounter it), but from a couple of years later when it was still controversial and I was just starting to get into S-100.
Re: An Open Letter to Hobbyists (1976)
#5It's been pointed out elsewhere that the $40,000 of computer time referred to was largely on their utilization of government/publically-funded computers.
Re: An Open Letter to Hobbyists (1976)
#6If you enjoy history of computing then I can very strongly recommend you get the audiobook of "The Innovators" https://www.amazon.com/The-Innovators-Walter-Isaacson-audiob...
The audiobook I found thoroughly entertaining.
Re: An Open Letter to Hobbyists (1976)
#7This was the point when Bill Gates got red pilled about human nature and decided to focus on profit instead of "sharing the joy".
Re: An Open Letter to Hobbyists (1976)
#8Interesting window into the history that likely shaped Microsoft's view of customers for decades since then. I'd say MS still probably has that attitude baked into their company, treating customers as adversaries that need to be protected against. They are definitely not known for their customer service, but they ARE known for their complex licensing and sometimes heavy-handed enforcement, that I guess maybe one coul…
> I'd say MS still probably has that attitude baked into their company, treating customers as adversaries that need to be protected against.
This is true of every company that sells intellectual "property" instead of material objects or labor.
Re: An Open Letter to Hobbyists (1976)
#9I know it isn’t popular to have this point of view, but I think Gates was right at the time. The work Microsoft did on BASIC back then was good, and it made computers usable. That people wouldn’t pay made the entire thing worthless. This ended up being why Microsoft went for hardware makers and BASIC came on ROM and MSDOS came with your PC: it was the only way to make any money on software. Today, everything people use aside from an OS (or in the case of the Linux or BSD folks, including the OS) is open source or it’s SaaS. The SaaS phenomenon gets people to pay EVEN more for software, so it will never end. The same with crappy apps on phones that are charged monthly or annually.
Re: An Open Letter to Hobbyists (1976)
#10Interesting window into the history that likely shaped Microsoft's view of customers for decades since then. I'd say MS still probably has that attitude baked into their company, treating customers as adversaries that need to be protected against. They are definitely not known for their customer service, but they ARE known for their complex licensing and sometimes heavy-handed enforcement, that I guess maybe one coul…
I’d say this letter is not that far from OSS maintainers that have quite often breakdowns because no one wants to pay and everyone wants bug fixes.
It is perfectly fine to want to be compensated for one’s work.