first edition
1976 · Albuquerque
by GATES, BILL
Albuquerque: Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems, 1976. First edition. Very Good. FIRST PUBLISHED EDITION. This landmark work marks the birth of the commercial software industry, a critical moment in the digital revolution. Gates' letter is the software equivalent of Steve Jobs' prescient insight, on the hardware side, that personal computers could be a mass market consumer product for everyday people and not merely diverting contraptions for tech-savvy hobbyists. "Bill Gates saw the need for software to be a product unto itself, especially software that could be coded once and executed on a variety of computers. In 1976, he wrote an open letter to the hobbyists at the Homebrew Computer Club, encouraging them to stop sharing software, specifically commercial software." (Campbell).
In the early and mid-1970s the personal computer industry did not yet exist, but there were enthusiastic hobbyists who, using kits like the Altair 8800, were able to assemble and program their own machines. "There was no distinction between programmer and user, and certainly no meaningful distinction between hardware and software. As in the early days of computing, the code was the machine in a real sense. And code was something you naturally collaborated on and shared...And so it came as a shock when in February 1976, Bill Gates released "an open letter to hobbyists" about copying software" (Weber, p. 36).
"Gates, all of twenty years old, penned his full-throated statement of purpose to the computer world, "An Open Letter to the Hobbyists". This was Gates' 95 Theses nailed to the church door." (Good, p. 14).
Published the same year that Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak introduced the Apple-I computer, Bill Gates' "Open Letter" was revolutionary in attacking the hacker-ethic that prevailed at the time, arguing that the piracy of software was crippling the development of quality software written by professional programmers. The debate sparked by Gates' "Open Letter" led to dramatic changes in how software was developed, brought to market, sold, and, crucially, protected from theft, including the introduction of end user licenses.
"The idea of retail software in microcomputers was novel, and it required legal protection. The protection came in the form of the End User License Agreement (EULA), which changed the definition of ownership of software: You never actually own software, just a limited license to use it." (Campbell)
Copies of these early 'hobbyist' computer magazines are notoriously scarce, especially in this condition.
A note on the printing history: Gates's letter appeared in the Homebrew Computer Club Newsletter for January 31, 1976 which likely preceded this appearance in Computer Notes by a few days. The Homebrew issues, however, were Xerox'd pages distributed among a very small group of people and copies are now legendarily rare. The Computer Notes printing is generally considered the "first published" edition - even listed as such on Microsoft's timeline of their history on their official website.
GATES, BILL. An Open Letter to Hobbyists. In: Computer Notes, vol. 1, no. 9, February 1976, p. 3. Albuquerque, NM: Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems, 1976. Large newspaper format (398 x 291 mm), pp. [ONE], TWO to TWENTY. A spot of foxing in the margin of the first leaf (not affecting Gates' text) folded once for distribution. In handsome custom box with leather label on front board and spine. A beautiful, well-preserved copy. RARE.
References:
Steve Weber, The Success of Open Source (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004)
Dan Good, The Microsoft Story (Nashville, TN: HarperCollins Leadership, 2020)
Campbell, 'When Open Source came to Microsoft,' Code Magazine, September/October 2020. (Inventory #: 2892)
In the early and mid-1970s the personal computer industry did not yet exist, but there were enthusiastic hobbyists who, using kits like the Altair 8800, were able to assemble and program their own machines. "There was no distinction between programmer and user, and certainly no meaningful distinction between hardware and software. As in the early days of computing, the code was the machine in a real sense. And code was something you naturally collaborated on and shared...And so it came as a shock when in February 1976, Bill Gates released "an open letter to hobbyists" about copying software" (Weber, p. 36).
"Gates, all of twenty years old, penned his full-throated statement of purpose to the computer world, "An Open Letter to the Hobbyists". This was Gates' 95 Theses nailed to the church door." (Good, p. 14).
Published the same year that Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak introduced the Apple-I computer, Bill Gates' "Open Letter" was revolutionary in attacking the hacker-ethic that prevailed at the time, arguing that the piracy of software was crippling the development of quality software written by professional programmers. The debate sparked by Gates' "Open Letter" led to dramatic changes in how software was developed, brought to market, sold, and, crucially, protected from theft, including the introduction of end user licenses.
"The idea of retail software in microcomputers was novel, and it required legal protection. The protection came in the form of the End User License Agreement (EULA), which changed the definition of ownership of software: You never actually own software, just a limited license to use it." (Campbell)
Copies of these early 'hobbyist' computer magazines are notoriously scarce, especially in this condition.
A note on the printing history: Gates's letter appeared in the Homebrew Computer Club Newsletter for January 31, 1976 which likely preceded this appearance in Computer Notes by a few days. The Homebrew issues, however, were Xerox'd pages distributed among a very small group of people and copies are now legendarily rare. The Computer Notes printing is generally considered the "first published" edition - even listed as such on Microsoft's timeline of their history on their official website.
GATES, BILL. An Open Letter to Hobbyists. In: Computer Notes, vol. 1, no. 9, February 1976, p. 3. Albuquerque, NM: Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems, 1976. Large newspaper format (398 x 291 mm), pp. [ONE], TWO to TWENTY. A spot of foxing in the margin of the first leaf (not affecting Gates' text) folded once for distribution. In handsome custom box with leather label on front board and spine. A beautiful, well-preserved copy. RARE.
References:
Steve Weber, The Success of Open Source (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004)
Dan Good, The Microsoft Story (Nashville, TN: HarperCollins Leadership, 2020)
Campbell, 'When Open Source came to Microsoft,' Code Magazine, September/October 2020. (Inventory #: 2892)
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