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Bill Gates publishes his 'Open Letter to Hobbyists' decrying software piracy
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In February 1976 a 20-year-old Bill Gates published his 'Open Letter to Hobbyists,' rebuking early personal-computer enthusiasts who copied Microsoft's Altair BASIC without paying. 'Who can afford to do professional work for nothing?' Gates wrote, arguing that rampant copying would prevent good software from being written. The letter outraged a hobbyist culture that saw software as something to share freely, but it became an early and influential articulation of the idea that software is intellectual property worth paying for — a principle central to Microsoft's future.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Letter_to_Hobbyists
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