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The Open Letter to Hobbyists was an open letter written by Bill Gates, the founder of Micro-Soft, to early personal computer hobbyists, in which Gates asserts that software is intellectual property that should not be distributed for free. The letter, dated February 3, 1976, was published in the Homebrew Computer Club Newsletter (Volume 2, Issue 1), and was written in response to an incident at an earlier club meeting. An unknown person had brought a copy of Micro-Soft Altair BASIC on paper tape to that meeting. Dan Sokol, a semiconductor-engineering manager, then took that tape and made more than seventy copies of it, which were then distributed at the next meeting free of charge. 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 unauthorized copying in effect discourages developers from investing time and money into creating quality software. He cited the perceived unfairness of gaining the benefits of software authors' time, effort, and capital, but then depriving them of the royalties they are entitled to by copyright law. Some contend the letter became an important milestone for the development and expansion of "proprietary software" in the retail software market. Similarly it is also considered an important milestone in the development of the free software community, precisely because it contends that such a movement should not be possible, or result in professional-standard software.
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