I’m pretty sure Bill Gates was not the first to do so, but he was a major driving force.
Earlier, there was a trend of code sharing in magazine, BBSs, etc. So someone wanting to make a business selling software had to deal with rampant piracy. Software licenses didn’t really exist back then. So if you “bought” a program you could share it with others because since you bought it you “owned” it and could do anything with it.
Bill Gates then famously wrote an open letter to the programming hobbyist community in 1976 criticizing the code sharing practice that conflicts with those trying to sell software. You can read more about it here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Open_Letter_to_Hobbyists
I think it’s fascinating that Richard Stallman wrote a free software manifesto and Bill Gates wrote a proprietary software manifesto. I knew about the former for a long time before I heard about the latter.
I’m pretty sure Bill Gates was not the first to do so, but he was a major driving force.
Earlier, there was a trend of code sharing in magazine, BBSs, etc. So someone wanting to make a business selling software had to deal with rampant piracy. Software licenses didn’t really exist back then. So if you “bought” a program you could share it with others because since you bought it you “owned” it and could do anything with it.
Bill Gates then famously wrote an open letter to the programming hobbyist community in 1976 criticizing the code sharing practice that conflicts with those trying to sell software. You can read more about it here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Open_Letter_to_Hobbyists
I think it’s fascinating that Richard Stallman wrote a free software manifesto and Bill Gates wrote a proprietary software manifesto. I knew about the former for a long time before I heard about the latter.
And yet, in spite of this, FOSS is superior.