Open Letter to Hobbyists
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Letter_to_Hobbyists
The Open Letter to Hobbyists is a 1976 open letter written by Bill Gates ...in which Gates expresses dismay at the rampant software piracy taking place in the hobbyist community, particularly with regard to his company's software.
Gates expressed frustration with most computer hobbyists who were using his company's Altair BASIC software without having paid for it. He asserted that such widespread unauthorized copying in effect discouraged developers from investing time and money in creating high-quality software.
The Homebrew Computer Club was an early computer hobbyist club in Palo Alto, California. At the first meeting in March 1975, Steve Dompier gave an account of his visit to the MITS factory in Albuquerque, where he had attempted to pick up his order for one of everything.
He left with a computer kit with 256 bytes of memory.
....at a June seminar, a paper tape containing a pre-release version of Altair BASIC disappeared. The tape was given to Dompier, who passed it on to Dan Sokol, who had access to a high speed tape punch.
At the next Homebrew Computer Club meeting, 50 copies of Altair BASIC on paper tape appeared in a cardboard box.
As a result of Dompier's copying of Altair BASIC ... many Altair 8800 computer owners came to skip purchasing the bundled package from MITS directly, instead purchasing their memory boards from a third-party supplier and using a "borrowed" copy of Altair BASIC.
At the end of 1975, MITS was shipping a thousand computers a month, but copies of BASIC were selling in the low hundreds.
David Bunnell, Computer Notes Editor, was sympathetic to Gates' position. He wrote in the September 1975 issue that "customers have been ripping off MITS software".
Now I ask you--does a musician have the right to collect the royalty on the sale of his records or does a writer have the right to collect the royalty on the sale of his books? Are people who copy software any different than those who copy records and books?
Gates, keen to attempt to explain the cost of developing software to the hobbyist community, restated much of what Bunnell had written in September and what Roberts had written in October; however, the tone of his letter was different, instead emphasising Gates' view that hobbyists were stealing from him personally, and not from a corporation.
"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?"
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",[24] emphasising that Apple BASIC was free.[25]
Hal Singer of the Micro-8 Newsletter published an open letter to Roberts, pointing out that MITS promised a computer for $395, but that the price for a working system was $1000. He suggested a class action lawsuit or a Federal Trade Commission investigation into false advertising was in order. Hal also noted that rumors were circulating that Gates had developed BASIC on a Harvard University computer funded by the US government, and that customers should not pay for software already paid for by the taxpayer.[27]