Editing An Open Letter to Hobbyists (section)

{{Short description|1976 letter by Bill Gates to PC hobbyists}}
{{Bill Gates series}}
"'''An Open Letter to Hobbyists'''" is a 1976 [[open letter]] written by [[Bill Gates]], the co-founder of [[Microsoft]], to early [[personal computer]] hobbyists, in which Gates expresses dismay at the widespread duplication of [[software]] taking place in the hobbyist community, particularly with regard to his company's software.

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 use of his software in effect discouraged [[software developer|developers]] from investing time and money in creating high-quality software. He cited the unfairness of gaining the benefits of software authors' time, effort, and capital without paying them as a rationale for refusing to publish the source code for his company's flagship product, thereby making it unavailable to lower-income hobbyists who could have borrowed such program blueprints from their local library and entered the program into their hobby computer by data entry.