On February 3rd, 1976, almost 10 years prior to the unveiling of Windows 1.0, an irate Bill Gates wrote the following open letter to hobbyists in response to piracy of Altair BASIC, the BASIC interpreter Gates had produced with Paul Allen and Monte Davidoff which was essentially the first piece of software ever released by Microsoft (then named Micro-Soft). The letter was published in a number of leading computer publications and, interestingly, initial versions of the software itself predated the widespread introduction of floppy disks, and as such were released on paper tape. Hence this photo of Altair BASIC 8K.
Source
Transcript
February 3, 1976
An Open Letter to Hobbyists
To me, the most critical thing in the hobby market right now is the lack of good software courses, books and software itself. Without good software and an owner who understands programming, a hobby computer is wasted. Will quality software be written for the hobby market?
Almost a year ago, Paul Allen and myself, expecting the hobby market to expand, hired Monte Davidoff and developed Altair BASIC. Though the initial work took only two months, the three of us have spent most of the last year documenting, improving and adding features to BASIC. Now we have 4K, 8K, EXTENDED, ROM and DISK BASIC. The value of the computer time we have used exceeds $40,000.
The feedback we have gotten from the hundreds of people who say they are using BASIC has all been positive. Two surprising things are apparent, however, 1) Most of these "users" never bought BASIC (less than 10% of all Altair owners have bought BASIC), and 2) The amount of royalties we have received from sales to hobbyists makes the time spent on Altair BASIC worth less than $2 an hour.
Why is this? 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. Who cares if the people who worked on it get paid?
Is this fair? One thing you don't do by stealing software is get back at MITS for some problem you may have had. MITS doesn't make money selling software. The royalty paid to us, the manual, the tape and the overhead make it a break-even operation. One thing you do do is prevent good software from being written. 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? The fact is, no one besides us has invested a lot of money in hobby software. We have written 6800 BASIC, and are writing 8080 APL and 6800 APL, but there is very little incentive to make this software available to hobbyists. Most directly, the thing you do is theft.
What about the guys who re-sell Altair BASIC, aren't they making money on hobby software? Yes, but those who have been reported to us may lose in the end. They are the ones who give hobbyists a bad name, and should be kicked out of any club meeting they show up at.
I would appreciate letters from any one who wants to pay up, or has a suggestion or comment. Just write me at 1180 Alvarado SE, #114, Albuquerque, New Mexico, 87108. Nothing would please me more than being able to hire ten programmers and deluge the hobby market with good software.
(Signed)
Bill Gates
General Partner, Micro-Soft
via lettersofnote.com
But it's true that piracy is hurting the industry
Piracy may be specifically hurting IP industries, but it's a net win for the economy. The dead weight loss [wikipedia.org] caused by monopoly rights damages the economy as a whole, probably by amounts that dwarf the whole revenue of those industries, and only piracy mitigates that damage.
But it's not a good model to sustain the development and producment.
At the efficiency levels seen in the monopoly industries it's obvious that neither is monopoly a good model to sustain development and production. At about 5% efficiency, as in the music industry, it's even worse than the worst of government run programs. Others, like productivity software, have a level of fungibility which has at least had some competitive effect. None, however, demonstrate anything remotely like what an acceptable overhead should look like in a competitive industry and together the IP industries are an albatross around the neck of todays western economy.
via tech.slashdot.org
What do you think about piracy?