compilation | Wang Qilong
Through "Today in History", we can look at the future from the past and change the future from the present.
Today is February 3, 2022. On February 3, 50 years ago today, on February 3, 1972, the 11th Winter Olympics was held in Sapporo, Japan. It was the first time for the Winter Olympics in Asia. More than 1,600 athletes from 35 countries and regions participated. Just tomorrow, the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics will be opened. my country's curling mixed doubles team has won a good start in its first match last night. I wish the Olympic athletes a happy match on this New Year's reunion, and I wish the winter event that will begin in the new year a complete success. Looking back on February 3 in computer history, there is another big event that is closely related to our lives. Do you know what it is?
February 3, 1976: David Bunnell published an open letter on pirated software for Bill Gates in Computer Notes magazine
February 3, 1976
An open letter to computer enthusiasts
William Henry Gates III
In my opinion, the most important thing for the current computer enthusiasts is the lack of good software courses, books and software itself. If there is no good software and a person who knows programming, a computer used by computer enthusiasts will be wasted. But will anyone write high-quality software for amateurs?
About a year ago, Paul Allen and I wanted the hobby market to expand, so I hired Monte Davidoff to develop Altair BASIC; although the initial work took only two months, the three of us spent most of last year writing documentation, improving and adding features for BASIC. Today, we already have 4K, 8K, EXTENDED, ROM and DISK BASIC, and if we calculate the value of our work, we have spent over $40,000.
The feedback we get from hundreds of people who claim they are using BASIC is positive. However, two surprising things are obvious: one, most of these “users” have never purchased BASICs (less than 10% of all Altair users have purchased BASICs); two, the amount of royalties we receive from the fees sold to amateurs makes the time we spend on Altair BASICs worth less than $2 per hour.
Why is this? Most software enthusiasts should know that most of you are using pirated software. Hardware must be paid, but software can be shared. Who cares if those who work for it are paid? Is this fair? If you use pirated software, you cannot ask MITS to solve the problem when you encounter problems. MITS does not make money from selling software because the royalties they pay us and the software’s manual, tape and business administration expenses offset the software revenue and only break even. Everything you do now is stopping people from writing good software.
Who can afford to do professional work for free? What other hobbyists can invest 3 personal time to program, find all the vulnerabilities, write documents for his products and publish them for free? The truth is, no one except us invests so much money in amateur software. We have written 6800 BASIC and are writing 8080 APL and 6800 APL, and we have little incentive to provide this software to amateurs. Say something straightforward, what you do is steal.
So, what about those who resell Altair BASIC, don’t they make money with hobby software? Yes, but these will eventually be reported and failed. They are those who give amateurs a bad reputation and should be kicked out of any club or conference they attend.
I will thank anyone who wants to pay for it, and if you have any suggestions or comments, please write me too, address 1180 Alvarado SE, 114, Albuquerque, New Mexico, 87108. Nothing makes me more happy than hiring 10 programmers and flooding the computer enthusiast market with high-quality software.
Bill Gates
Micro-Soft General Partner
Source: Wikipedia
"An Open Letter to Hobbyists" is an open letter written by Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft on February 3, 1976. In this article, Gates expressed disappointment at the rampant software piracy among the amateur community because they used Microsoft's Altair BASIC software without paying. He asserted that such extensive unauthorized replication actually prevented developers from investing time and money in creating high-quality software. He noted that it is unfair to gain benefits from the time, energy and capital of software authors without paying.
Time went back to December 1974, when Gates, a student at Harvard , and Paul Allen, who worked at Honeywell, Boston, first saw the Altair 8800 computer in January 1975 in Volkswagen Electronics magazine. Both Gates and Allen want to be the first to provide BASIC for Altair computers and hope to give them a start-up opportunity with the Traf-O-Data computer software development tool they developed previously based on the Intel 8008 microprocessor. So in early March of the following year, Allen, Gates and their classmate at Harvard , created a BASIC interpreter to simulate work on Harvard's PDP-10 mainframe.
After the software testing was successful, MITS agreed to obtain a software license from Allen and Gates. So Allen quit his job as Honeywell and became MITS vice president and software director with an annual salary of $30,000; while Gates was still a Harvard student and worked as a contractor at MITS. In the October 1975 company newsletter, he called his title in the company "Software Expert". On July 22, 1975, MITS signed a contract with Allen and Gates, and the parties would receive $3,000 and royalty on each copy of the BASIC sold; MITS retained an exclusive global license for the project for 10 years.
Source: Wikipedia
By the end of 1975, MITS had shipped 1,000 computers per month, but BASIC's software copies could only be sold for a few hundred copies. Additional software projects require more resources; the MITS 8-inch floppy disk system is about to be released, and the MITS 680B computer based on the Motorola 6800 is about to be released soon. Allen and Gates’ high school friend Ric Weiland was hired to convert an 8080 BASIC to a 6800 microprocessor. David Bunnell, editor of Computer Notes and Gates’ friend, expressed sympathy for Gates’s position. He wrote in a September 1975 issue that “customers have been copying MITS software.”
Gates was keen to explain the cost of developing software to the enthusiast community, and finally, on February 3, 1976, he published an open letter emphasizing that enthusiasts were stealing from him personally, not from companies. One of the main goals of this letter is homebrew computer club (Homebrew Computer Club), so Gates directly sent a copy to the club; the main theme of the homebrew club is software sharing. In 1976, Wozniak, the founder of Apple , made the first personal computer, Apple I, using the information shared freely within the club, so that people can use computers without professionalism. To ensure that the letter would be noticed, David Bunnell sent the letter to all mainstream computer publications at the time by special mailing.
The term open source was born 22 years after Gates wrote the letter (see the follow-up to this article for details). Computer scientist Jim Warren once came up with a viable alternative to the question of "pirated" software raised by Bill Gates in his angry letter to computer enthusiasts; that is, when the software is free, or so cheap that it is easier to pay than copy it, the software will not be "stolen". What do you think of the Open Letter to Computer Fans and the world that is now very different from what Gates expects? Welcome to discuss in the comment section.
Source: Wikipedia
1986-3: Time magazine reported the fog problem
Image source: Wikipedia
February 3, 1986-3, Time magazine reported the fog problem . Vaporware refers to products that have been hyped in advance several years before development or during development. It is usually software, and in most cases it will be released delayed, and many products will not even be released. The word coined in the early 1980s is no longer popular now, but the behavior reflected behind it has never disappeared, but has been "incessantly" and even intensified after various packaging. To describe "fog parts" in current language, that is " painting cake ".
In the computer industry, fog refers to a product, usually refers to computer hardware or software. In the second half of the 80th century, the usage of this word has been extended to include products such as automobiles. The word "fog" was coined in 1982 by a Microsoft engineer to describe the company's Xenix operating system, a variant of the Unix system; Microsoft engineers coined the word with a concept similar to "selling cigarettes", suggesting that Microsoft is selling a product that it will not support soon. In 1983, entrepreneur Esther Dyson first used the word "fog" in a newsletter. This term is quite popular in the industry and is used to describe products that they feel took a long time to release. Stewart Alsop, editor of InfoWorld magazine, used this word to satirize Bill Gates. In 1985, Bill Gates released the company's first Windows version, which won the Golden Vaporware award.
"fog parts" reflect a tendency in the computer industry that when it comes to marketing, the practice is too rash and scattered. Microsoft, Apple and Oracle have all been condemned for having similar practices in practice at some point. This overcommitment later became one of the iconic features of Silicon Valley . What electronic products or software do you think can be called "fog parts" in recent years? Welcome to leave your thoughts in the comment section.
Source: Wikipedia, Baidu Encyclopedia
February 3, 1998: The word open source was born
Development based on the sharing and collaborative improvement of software source code is basically the same as the history of software development itself. In the late 1990s, with programmers' mainstream recognition of Linux and the release of Netscape browser source code, interest and participation in this phenomenon increased significantly. On February 3, 1998, shortly after the release of the source code for Netscape browser , Todd Anderson, Christine Peterson of Foresight Institute, John “maddog” Hall and Larry Augustin of the Linux Foundation, Sam Ockman of the Silicon Valley Linux user group, Michael Tiemann of Red Hat and veteran hacker Eric Raymond gathered at a strategic conference in Paloato, California to create the term "open source". The strategic meeting began because the seven people realized that focusing on Netscape around the world can create an opportunity to educate and advocate for the superiority of open development.
Source: CSDN Downloaded from the East ICh
The term "OpenSource" used to describe software was originally proposed by a group of people from the free software movement who criticized the political agenda and moral philosophy implicit in the term " free software " and tried to reframe the discourse, reflecting a more business-minded position. Furthermore, the ambiguity of the term “free software” is believed to hinder business adoption.At the meeting, participant Christine Peterson suggested the use of the term "open source" for the first time at the meeting to describe Netscape's announcement of open browser code; the next day, Linus Torvalds gave support, and Richard Stallman, founder of the free software movement, initially appeared to adopt the term, but later changed his mind.
The term gained further popularity in an event organized in April 1998 by technology publisher Tim O’Reilly. Originally called the Free Software Summit and later the Open Source Summit, leaders of many of the most important free software and open source projects participated in the event, and at the conference, alternatives to the term "free software" were discussed. Michael Tyman advocates “sourceware” as a new term, while Raymond advocates “open source.” The gathered developers voted and announced the winner at the evening’s press conference: Open Source.
Amid the collision of open source software and free software concepts, free and open source software (FOSS) came into being. FOSS is a computer software that can be classified as both free software and open source software. Anyone is authorized to use, copy, research and modify the software in any way. Its source code is open and shared, so people are encouraged to volunteer to improve the design of the software. Compared with proprietary software, this software can reduce software costs and improve security and stability. How do you view the differences between open source and free software? Do you think today's open source goes against its original intention? Welcome to participate in this voting and share your insights in the comment section.
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