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tools move to sidebar hide actions read edit view history general what links here related changes upload file permanent link page information cite this page get shortened url switch to legacy parser print export download as pdf printable version in other projects wikimedia commons wikisource wikidata item appearance move to sidebar hide from wikipedia the free encyclopedia redirected from open letter to hobbyists 1976 letter by bill gates to pc hobbyists this article is part of a series about bill gates personal awards and honors philanthropy political positions public image residence family companies traf o data microsoft history benlabs cascade investment terrapower gates ventures charitable organizations gates foundation match for africa the giving pledge oer project breakthrough energy mission innovation writings an open letter to hobbyists the road ahead business the speed of thought how to avoid a climate disaster how to prevent the next pandemic source code my beginnings related bill gates flower fly codex leicester lost on the grand banks paul allen v t e an open letter to hobbyists is a 1976 open letter written by bill gates the co founder of microsoft to early personal computer hobbyists in which gates expresses dismay at the widespread duplication of software taking place in the hobbyist community particularly with regard to his company s software in the letter 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 use of his software in effect discouraged developers from investing time and money in creating high quality software he cited the unfairness of gaining the benefits of software authors time effort and capital without paying them as a rationale for refusing to publish the source code for his company s flagship product thereby making it unavailable to lower income hobbyists who could have borrowed such program blueprints from their local library and entered the program into their hobby computer by data entry altair basic edit main article altair basic gates was impressed with steve dompier s altair music in december 1974 gates a student at harvard university alongside microsoft co founder paul allen who worked at honeywell in boston both saw the altair 8800 computer in the january 1975 issue of popular electronics for the first time they had both written basic language programs since their days at lakeside school in seattle and knew the altair computer was powerful enough to support a basic interpreter a both gates and allen wanted to be the first to offer basic for the altair computer and expected the software development tools they had previously created for their intel 8008 microprocessor based traf o data computer to give them a head start 1 by early march of the following year allen gates and monte davidoff a fellow harvard student had created a basic interpreter that worked under simulation on a pdp 10 mainframe computer at harvard allen and gates had been in contact with ed roberts of mits and in march 1975 allen visited albuquerque new mexico to test the software on an actual machine to both allen and roberts surprise the software worked 2 mits agreed to license the software from allen and gates allen left his job at honeywell and became the vice president and director of software at mits with a salary of 30 000 equivalent to 179 499 in 2025 a year b 4 gates remained a student at harvard and worked under mits as a contractor instead with the october 1975 company newsletter giving his title at the company as software specialist 5 on july 22 1975 mits signed the contract with allen and gates who would receive 3 000 at the signing and a royalty for each copy of basic sold 30 for the 4k version 35 for the 8k version and 60 for the expanded version the contract had a cap of 180 000 with mits retaining an exclusive worldwide license to the program for 10 years mits would supply the computer time necessary for development on a pdp 10 owned by the albuquerque school district 6 the april 1975 issue of mits s computer notes had the banner headline altair basic up and running the altair 8800 computer was a break even sale for mits who would need to sell additional memory boards i o boards and other add on options to make a profit when purchased with two 4k memory boards and an i o board the 8k basic cost just 75 the initial standalone price for basic being 500 clarification needed to promote the computer mits purchased a camper van and outfitted it with the complete product line dubbed the mits mobile the company used this van to tour the united states giving seminars featuring the altair computer and altair basic 1975 homebrew computer club and subsequent copying of altair basic edit 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 7 he left with a computer kit with 256 bytes of memory at the april 16 1975 club meeting dompier keyed in a small program that played the song the fool on the hill on a nearby am radio through the use of radio frequency interference or static controlled by the timing loops in the program 8 gates who could not figure out how the computer could broadcast to the radio described this in the july 1975 edition of computer notes as the best demo program i ve seen for the altair 9 the june 1975 homebrew computer club newsletter carried this item written by fred moore editor the mits mobile came to rickey s hyatt house in palo alto june 5th 6th the room was packed 150 with amateurs and experimenters eager to find out about this new electronic toy 10 altair 8k basic on paper tape this was a popular storage medium before the invention of the low cost floppy disk at the same 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 11 mits offered a complete altair system with two mits 4k dynamic ram boards a serial interface board and altair basic for 995 12 however the 264 mits ram boards were unreliable due to several component and design problems an enterprising homebrew computer club member robert marsh designed a 4k static memory that was plug in compatible with the altair 8800 and sold it for 255 13 his company processor technology became one of the most successful altair compatible board suppliers as a result of dompier s copying of altair basic and marsh s third party 4k static memory plug in 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 ed roberts acknowledged the 4k dynamic ram board problems in the october 1975 computer notes the price was reduced from 264 to 195 and existing purchasers got a 50 rebate the full price for 8k altair basic was reduced to 200 though roberts declined a customer s request that mits give basic to customers for free noting that mits had made a 180 000 royalty commitment to micro soft roberts also wrote that anyone who is using a stolen copy of mits basic should identify himself for what he is a thief and described third party hardware suppliers as parasite companies 14 the newly released processor technology static ram board drew more current than the mits dynamic ram board with the addition of two or three boards taxing the altair 8800 s power supply as a consequence howard fullmer began selling a power supply upgrade for the altair naming his company parasitic engineering as a nod to roberts comments 15 c fullmer would later help define the industry standard for altair compatible boards the s 100 bus standard 17 the next year 1976 would see many altair bus computer clones such as the imsai 8080 and the processor technology sol 20 open letter edit homebrew computer club newsletter volume 2 issue 1 january 31 1976 at the end of 1975 mits was shipping a thousand computers a month but copies of basic were selling in the low hundreds 18 additional software projects vague required more resources the mits 8 inch floppy disk system was about to be released as was the mits 680b computer based on the motorola 6800 a high school friend of allen and gates ric weiland was hired to convert the 8080 basic to the 6800 microprocessor 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 19 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 one of the principal targets of the letter was the homebrew computer club with a copy sent to the club directly the letter also appeared in computer notes to ensure the letter would be noticed bunnell sent the letter via special delivery mail to every major computer publication in the country 20 in the letter gates also mentioned the development of the apl programming language for the 8080 and 6800 microprocessors a programming language in vogue with some other computer scientists in the 1970s the language which used a character set based on the greek alphabet required special terminals to implement that most hobbyist terminals did not have as well as not displaying symbols from the greek alphabet most hobbyist terminals did not even display lowercase letters though gates was enamored with apl allen did not believe it could be sold as a product interest in the project soon faded and the software itself was never completed 21 reaction edit ad for the apple i computer noting apple s policy of providing free or inexpensive software for its computers following the difficulties with receiving piecemeal royalties microsoft switched to a fixed priced contract with mits who would pay 31 200 for a non exclusive license of 6800 basic 22 the future sales of basic for the commodore pet the apple ii the radio shack trs 80 and others were all fixed price contracts d 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 microsoft s software development was done on a dec pdp 10 mainframe computer system with allen having developed a program that could completely simulate a new microprocessor system this allowed microsoft to write and debug software before the new computer hardware was complete the company was charged by the hour and by the amount of resources such as storage and printing used citation needed the 40 000 of computer time mentioned in the letter as a result of these software developments the 6800 basic was complete before the altair 680 was finished with the 680 hardware arriving months late 26 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 gates allen and davidoff had used a pdp 10 at harvard s aiken computer center the computer system of which had been funded by the department of defense through its defense advanced research projects agency harvard officials were not pleased that gates and allen who was not a student had used the pdp 10 to develop a commercial product but determined that the computer itself which technically belonged to the military was not covered by any harvard policy the pdp 10 was controlled by professor thomas cheatham who felt that students could use the machine for personal use harvard placed restrictions on the computer s use and gates and allen had to use a commercial time share computer in boston to finalize the software 28 in 2008 homebrew member lee felsenstein recalled similar doubts about gates 40 000 number well we all knew that the evaluation of computer time was the ultimate in funny money you never pay that much for the computer time and i think that research will show that they were using someone else s computer time someone else was paying for that it could have been honeywell where paul allen was working so we all knew this to be a spurious argument 29 according to felsenstein gates letter delineated a rift between the actual industry where there s trying to make money and there s those hobbyist where we re trying to make things happen the industry needs the hobbyists and this was illustrated by what happened eventually when national semiconductor which made their own microprocessor chips in 77 or 78 decided they needed a basic they asked what s the most popular basic and the answer was microsoft basic because everybody had copied it and everybody was using it so we made microsoft the standard basic national semiconductor went to microsoft and bought a license they were in business that way this was the marketing function and the hobbyists did the marketing with a complete antipathy of the company in question there were other basics and you know some of them might even have been better gates later success was in a certain measure because of what we did that he said we shouldn t do we were thieves to do it and all 29 there is a viable alternative to the problems raised by bill gates in his irate letter to computer hobbyists concerning ripping off software when software is free or so inexpensive that it s easier to pay for it than to duplicate it then it won t be stolen jim warren july 1976 30 jim warren homebrew computer club member and editor of dr dobb s journal wrote in the july 1976 acm programming language newsletter about the successful tiny basic project 30 the goal was to create basic language interpreters for microprocessor based compute...