50 years ago, a young Bill Gates took on the 'software pirates'

https://thenewstack.io/50-years-ago-a-young-bill-gates-took-on-the-software-pirates/

by MilnerRoute • 6 months ago

56 53 6 months ago

ThrowawayR23• 6 months ago

The person authoring the Post-Open License (discussed in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38783500), a paid shared source license in all but name, is the fellow they chose to interview about Gates' letter? How ... ironic. The reasoning behind POL and the growing number of shared source licenses is exactly the same as Gates' letter: developers deserve to get paid for their efforts instead of having their code shared without compensation. Both are a ringing endorsement of Gates' argument, not libre software and the Four Freedoms.

westurner• 6 months ago

From what was their victim software derived? How much time did it take to write the letter?

Is this the one with Noah Wylie?

XEROX Alto (PARC ), 86DOS, CPM DOS, BASIC,

Xerox Alto (1973) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xerox_Alto

The Altair 8800 has an Intel 8080 CPU:

Altair 8800: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altair_8800

Intel 8080 -> Intel 8088

CP/M (1974) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CP/M

DOS > History: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOS#History

86-DOS: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/86-DOS :

86-DOS shared a few of its commands with other operating systems such as OS/8 and CP/M, which made it easy to port programs from the latter. Its application programming interface was very similar to that of CP/M. The system was licensed and then purchased by Microsoft and developed further as MS-DOS and PC DOS. [2]

BASIC > History: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BASIC_interpreter#History

HP had BASIC on mainframes in the 1960s.

This paper (ScholarlyArticle) was published in 1974:

"A BASIC Language Interpreter for the Intel 8008 Microprocessor". ACM. (1974) from UIUC: University of Illinois Champagne-Urbana .. archive.org: https://archive.org/details/basiclanguageint658weav/page/n8/... .. scholar: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C43&q=A+B...

"What Bill Gates’ first commercial code (Altair BASIC) looks like under the hood" https://maizure.org/projects/decoded-altair-basic/index.html .. https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/1o9wk8x/what_b... :

Monte Davidoff: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monte_Davidoff :

Davidoff was assigned the task of writing floating-point arithmetic routines for Altair BASIC over the summer, when the three of them lived in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where their company was then headquartered.[1] Gates, Allen, and Davidoff managed to write the software without ever seeing the Altair 8800 thanks to a simulator

BASIC > History > Microcomputer era: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BASIC_interpreter :

In January 1975, the Altair 8800 was announced and sparked the microcomputer revolution. One of the first microcomputer versions of BASIC was co-written by Gates, Allen, and Monte Davidoff for their newly formed company, Micro-Soft. This was released by MITS in punch tape format for the Altair 8800 shortly after the machine itself, [7] showcasing BASIC as the primary language for early microcomputers.
In March 1975, Steve Wozniak attended the first meeting of the Homebrew Computer Club and began formulating the design of his own computer. Club members were excited by Altair BASIC. [8] Wozniak concluded that his machine would have to have a BASIC of its own. At the time he was working at Hewlett Packard and used their TS-BASIC minicomputer dialect as the basis for his own version. Integer BASIC was released on cassette for the Apple I, and was supplied in ROM when the Apple II shipped in the summer of 1977. [9]

..Re: FreeBASIC, Q64, EDIT.COM and its new rust clone; where it's at today: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44018152

jordanb2• 6 months ago

And if those pirates had been successful young Billy might not have grown up to be such a naughty boy.

King-Aaron3• 6 months ago

I find it fascinating how this particular sites' users post articles like this while there's so much obscene news about the dude right now.

jojobas3• 6 months ago

He was implicated in infidelity and STDs, not kiddie diddling, or was he?

selecsosi• 6 months ago

I mean (allegedly) giving your significant other an STD, and then trying to procure secretive meds to give to them so that you don't have to tell them is high up on the list of horrible behavior for a person

King-Aaron3• 6 months ago

There's a bunch of stuff coming out about his coordination with Epstein to run pandemic simulations, and a lot of business level stuff going on after Epstein's initial run-ins with the law. That aside if he's on a personal enough level to ask him for antibiotics to sneakily slip his wife, then Bill would definitely know about all the rest.

Really don't have any more room to give these people the benefit of doubt.

IncreasePosts• 6 months ago

Epstein made the claim, but there's no indiction whether it is true, or him making it up for clout/just to mess with Gates, etc.

dngray2• 6 months ago

Not everyone mentioned in the Epstein documents is associated with kid diddling.

Also the thing about "surreptitiously giving melinda antibiotics" weren't actually written by Bill and he has since denied it.

It’s unclear who the Boris referenced in the emails is, or if the messages were ever sent to anyone. Only Epstein is listed in the to and from fields.

https://www.theverge.com/tech/871879/bill-gates-epstein-file...

So the emails were some emails in Epstein's draft folder he never sent to anyone. This is a dude who peddled in dirt and leverage against anyone and anything, probably how he got so wealthy and why he had his island parties in the first place. There is a reason why in the Kevin Rudd related mentions he is described as a "odious character in the extreme" basically stay clear from him.

dyauspitr2• 6 months ago

What stuff? Adultery is pretty milquetoast

detectivestory• 6 months ago

The dead internet is alive and well

woodpanel• 6 months ago

The whole Epstein-Saga from the victims, the scale of operations, to the sheer range of people he connected from Gates, to Bannon to German Newspaper Editor-In-Chiefs, makes Berlusconis Bunga Bunga parties seem wholesome and decent.

jojobas3• 6 months ago

Microsoft quickly learned to pick their battles and basically left Windows anti-piracy features at "just about anyone will be able to do it" level, pretty much only going after large dodgy companies. MS benefited enormously from all the piracy in developing countries, around teenage tinkerers and so on.

kens2• 6 months ago

Seriously, I consider this to be Microsoft's key innovation: the idea that people should pay for software and that people should be forced to pay for software.

smackeyacky• 6 months ago

The payment for software was well established on big iron by the 1970s before Microsoft were established

fuzzfactor3• 6 months ago

That was supposed to be enough.

It was well-accepted even at big companies like HP, microcomputers that fit on a desk were intended for individual "owners" to get the most out of the electronics by widely sharing programs so each person in that particular hardware ecosystem from the beginning could build on everybody else's work.

"Teams" weren't supposed to be necessary.

At least for the utility type of things that there was the most widespread need for. Nobody dreamed of making an improvent to something like a file manager and not contributing it to a newsletter.

There's no faster way to move ahead when you're talking about technology.

Something truly novel would probably be expected to receive a patent, otherwise code itself was not copyrighted like it can be today. Most people considered code to be the part of the computer that you programmed in yourself, and everybody needed as many sources as possible to learn from or nobody was going to get as far as the electronics were capable of. Everybody was expected to freely run all kinds of things that other people wrote, otherwise how are best practices supposed to arise?

This was before PC's or even Apples, these were industrial HP's not hobbyists using them at home.

These were microprocessor devices, built to be ideally affordable like nothing else, just the opposite of a mainframe which had always been out-of-reach for almost all aspiring programmers.

The idea was for nothing about them to cost money for the user unless there was absolutely no other way. And then it needed to be attractively priced. Nothing else could be considered suitable.

Most of the code to do most anything that most anybody was doing, was supposed to be easily available without actual business transactions. So the only programming you had to do yourself was mainly the specialized stuff for your own unique requirements beyond that. And that was supposed to get easier constantly because everything else was moving forward for every user in unison. The sky was the limit if microprocessors could catch on and everybody get the most they have to offer. After a few decades at the rate it was going? Sheesh.

Like nothing else can compare to, that part was getting easier all the time as everything was building upon the continuous progress everyone with that type hardware was making.

Until Gates came along and did this.

flomo3• 6 months ago

What Microsoft actually did was make deals with OEMs and distributors so they got paid for every machine sold. In the 1980s, home computers had MS-BASIC in the ROMs, and PCs came with "Vendor DOS", you couldn't even buy MS-DOS.

hulitu• 6 months ago

What Microsoft actually did was make deals with OEMs and distributors

... and later with governments and universities.

asdefghyk7• 6 months ago

Bill Gates was a ruthless and predatory business man. It is well known - Used to build in deliberate incompatibilities with the Windows

margorczynski• 6 months ago

Recent news show he's not only predatory business-wise.

fuzzfactor3• 6 months ago

Like I said in the other submission;

By the time people realized he wanted all the booty for himself, it was too late :\

renewiltord• 6 months ago

And today, half a century later, most HN and Reddit software people are enthusiasts about software licenses. Followers, no doubt, of this philosophy.

asdefghyk7• 6 months ago

Is not generally well known but Microsoft stole the idea of product activation ( as used in Windows XP and more ) and copied the methodology of the activation parameters etc from the guy that invented and patented it . There was a big court case about it and appeals , it ended with Microsoft having to pay penalty of (I recall ) $250M USD . There is very brief info on this wikipedia page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ric_Richardson

There is a much more detailed video by Ric RIchardson around I will see if I can find it and post the link .....

OK found the link. https://rss.com/podcasts/unemployable/1485621/

This link has blurb for another entrepreneur company, just ignore / skip that. There is a part where the inventor gives detailed info about the court battle with Microsoft and technical details of his product activation technology.

metadat• 6 months ago

The irony of stealing product activation is WOW :) welcome to capitalism.

apples_oranges• 6 months ago

welcome to humanity: do as I say, not as I do

asdefghyk7• 6 months ago

One other thing , if you want to know all the dodgy court cases Microsoft got involved in and the penalty's that had to pay- it will be mentioned / disclosed in their annual financial reports - since these large amounts , even possible amounts needed to be advised to shareholders in case /if/when they lost .....

I should add a party to the court case , disclosed the amount Cira $250M USD

even though in wikipedia says its not disclosed ....

flomo3• 6 months ago

They might have stolen the "patented method" (and i know how much u guys love patents), but they certainly did not steal the "idea". Software has had all sorts of horrible copy-protection for decades before this was introduced.

asdefghyk7• 6 months ago

In the quoted source from the inventor -the inventor mentions his disbelief that Microsoft used the exact same parameters (that the inventor used ) as determined from the PC - I think things like MAC address etc to uniquely id the machine

That's part of what I meant "... steal the idea ..."

Of course, the comment that there are lots copy protection methods ( previously ) is correct

THe inventor also had to spend cira about $15M in legal fees to bring his case. ANd that is many years ago 15-20? so a much bigger $ today. A small company would have no chance to be able to afford such a financial outlay ... Microsoft was often accused of obtaining information under NDA then developing their own similar product etc One case I recall was PEN computing. Pen Computing lost their case with the result "not proven" There where many more such cases, similar from smaller companies. Of course how many that where valid is unknown , since the court case often not go ahead, since small company not have resources ....

Gormo• 6 months ago

I think the above comment was about product activation specifically, and not the general concept of copy protection.

Of course, whether the method used for XP-era product activation should ever have been patentable in the first place is another questoin.

blell• 6 months ago

Wow wow wow... wait a moment... I thought HN agreed that the idea of software patents was ludicrous... what happened here that everybody agrees in this case that this was theft??

ThrowawayR23• 6 months ago

There's never been any shortage of hypocrisy here when it comes to intellectual property. Terry Pratchett captured it perfectly in Going Postal: “It was a little like stealing. It was exactly like stealing. It was, in fact, stealing. But there was no law against it because no one knew the crime existed, so is it really stealing if what’s stolen isn’t missed? And is it stealing if you’re stealing from thieves? Anyway, all property is theft, except mine.” The modern version of that last sentence would be "Intellectual property isn't real, except mine."

snvzz• 6 months ago

We are still trying to recover from the damage done.

swagtricker• 6 months ago

Of course, he left out the fact that the $40,000.00 USD worth of computer time was stolen from a US government owned computer on loan to one of his professors. He didn't actually PAY $40k USD or even raise funds to cover the equivalent value of the stolen computer time. Gates is a thief, and this was just his first big heist. I was always of the opinion that he US government should have gotten a cut of MS BASIC since it couldn't have been built without the modified emulator handling the ALTAIR 8080 assembly instructions.

adrians1• 6 months ago

I don't get what I should be angry about here? That Bill Gates wrote something when he was 20? 20 year olds say stupid things all the time. Think about you when you were 20.

asdefghyk7• 6 months ago

There is more that should be said about this story.

About Bill gates complaining about software pirates steal ing Microsoft software

When Microsoft grew large , rich and much more powerful, they where know to steal ideas from small companies . Companies that did not have financial resources to proceed with a some what court case. Since Microsoft had much larger financial resources.

Consider

These are some Google results for " Microsoft copied IP from smaller companies where they could "

AI Overview Microsoft has faced numerous lawsuits and allegations of copying intellectual property (IP) from smaller companies and competitors throughout its history, with some cases resulting in large fines and legal orders.

Specific examples include: i4i: In 2011, the U.S. Supreme Court denied a Microsoft appeal against a $290 million verdict for infringing on a small Canadian company's patent related to a text manipulation tool used in Microsoft Word 2003 and 2007.

Burst.com: Microsoft was sued by Burst.com, which alleged that Microsoft stole its patented media transmission technology and incorporated it into Windows Media Player 9 after a two-year collaboration that ended without a licensing agreement.

Disk Doubling Software: According to one report, Microsoft was accused of examining a third party's disk doubling software under the pretense of licensing it, only to produce a nearly identical "independently developed" product that even included the original's disabled test code and comments. This resulted in Microsoft paying millions in a settlement.

These cases have contributed to a perception that Microsoft, in its pursuit of market dominance, has historically leveraged its powerful position to appropriate technology from smaller entities

Apple: In 1988, Apple sued Microsoft, alleging that Windows 2.0 copied 189 different elements of the Macintosh operating system user interface. This case was eventually settled. The original graphical user interface (GUI) technology used by both Apple and Microsoft was initially developed at Xerox's PARC labs. Disk Doubling Software: According to one report, Microsoft was accused of examining a third party's disk doubling software under the pretense of licensing it, only to produce a nearly identical "independently developed" product that even included the original's disabled test code and comments. This resulted in Microsoft paying millions in a settlement.

Netscape and Antitrust Concerns: Microsoft's business practices, particularly its inclusion of Internet Explorer with Windows to undermine competitor Netscape, led to a major antitrust lawsuit by the U.S. government in the late 1990s and early 2000s, which found Microsoft had engaged in unlawful monopolization. These cases have contributed to a perception that Microsoft, in its pursuit of market dominance, has historically leveraged its powerful position to appropriate technology from smaller entities

asdefghyk7• 6 months ago

Microsoft allowed piracy to gain a competitive advantage. To allow their software to be entrenched. Not so much these days because lots pirated softwave is now a VECTOR for malware.

Im not sure if the next part of my writing is allowed ... but here goes ... This google search link explains this in a much more fluet situation than I can. Specifically the AI over view https://www.google.com/search?q=Microsoft+allowed+piracy+to+...

My Journey with Microsoft started with Dos3.3 I think. Was a big win 3.1 and Word 2 user ... etc right up to Win 11 now. So I have seen a lot of MS dodgyness over the years.

50 years ago, a young Bill Gates took on the 'software pirates'

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