So I just read Bill Gates' 1976 Open Letter To Hobbyists, in which he whines about not making more money from his software. You know, instead of being proud of making software that people wanted to use. And then the bastard went on and made proprietary licences for software the industry standard, holding back innovation and freedom for decades. What a douche canoe.

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[–] phase@lemmy.8th.world 40 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

He sold his first software before it was even finished to his own unuversity.

He saved Apple to avoid an antitrust trial.

It's just business right?

[–] bitcrafter@programming.dev 20 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

He sold his first software before it was even finished to his own unuversity.

What drives me crazy is when I hear this fact being cited as a positive thing that makes him a role model.

[–] phase@lemmy.8th.world 5 points 3 weeks ago

It is a very good sales person. But he didn't understood how could the network (or Internet) change the world, even with his Windows monopole. He had Encarta and lost it, without reusing it, to Wikipedia.

[–] bagsy@lemmy.world 12 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

He didn't even write that software, he had to buy it from someone else because his own version sucked.

[–] BCsven@lemmy.ca 2 points 3 weeks ago

He and colleagues wrote an interpreter to use BASIC on the Altair system. They didn't write basic from scratch