As the first home computers appeared in the mid-1970s, the world faced a question: Would its software be free? Bill Gates -- then 20 years old -- screamed no.
“Most of you steal your software…” wrote 20-year-old Gates. “Who cares if the people who worked on it get paid?” Gates had coded the BASIC interpreter for Altair's first home computer (with Paul Allen and Monte Davidoff) -- only to see it pirated by Steve Wozniak's friends at the Homebrew Computing Club.
Expecting royalties, a none-too-happy Gates issued an "Open Letter to Hobbyists" in the club's newsletter (as well as Altair's own publication), complaining "Who can afford to do professional work for nothing...? I would appreciate letters from any one who wants to pay up." But freedom-loving coders had other ideas.
When Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs released their Apple 1 home computer that summer, they stressed that "our philosophy is to provide software for our machines free or at minimal cost..." And the earliest open-source hackers began writing their own free Tiny Basic interpreters to create a free alternative to the Gates/Micro-Soft code. (This led to the first occurrence of the phrase “Copyleft” in October of 1976.
And ultimately Gates/Micro-Soft gave up and abandoned royalty-based pricing for future software they wrote for Altair, switching to up-front payments from the company.
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