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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

We are still trying to recover from the damage done.

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

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