• Read letter (2 minutes)
Writing in February 1976, Gates explicitly framed such copying as theft, claiming that fewer than 10% of Altair BASIC users had actually paid for it. He argued that without payment, no one could afford to do professional software work, and that piracy would ultimately prevent quality software from being written at all. The letter was a deliberately confrontational intervention—not merely a complaint but a pointed challenge to the prevailing hobbyist ethos of free sharing—and it provoked significant backlash, becoming an early flashpoint in the still-unresolved cultural argument over whether software should be treated as commercial property or as something to be shared freely.
• Title: An Open Letter to Hobbyists
• Author: Bill Gates
• Type: Letter
• Publisher: n/a
• Publication time: February 3, 1976