Although Stallman didn't know it at the time, seven
years before sending out his message to the n
et.unix-wizards newsgroup, Gates, a budding
entrepreneur and general partner with the
Albuquerque-based software firm Micro-Soft, later
spelled as Microsoft, had sent out his own open letter
to the software-developer community. Written in
response to the PC users copying Micro-Soft's software
programs, Gates' " Open Letter to Hobbyists" had
excoriated the notion of communal software development.
"Who can afford to do professional work for nothing?"
asked Gates. "What hobbyist can put three man-years
into programming, finding all bugs, documenting his
product, and distributing it for free?"See Bill Gates, "An Open Letter to
Hobbyists" (February
3, 1976). To view an online copy of this letter, go to
http://www.blinkenlights.com/classiccmp/gateswhine.html.
Although few hackers at the AI Lab saw the missive,
Gates' 1976 letter nevertheless represented the
changing attitude toward software both among commercial
software companies and commercial software developers.
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