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The 50th anniversary of Bill Gates' "An Open Letter To Software Hobbyists" was a couple of months ago and the letter was literally about developers deserving to be compensated for the hard work put their code. Now that much of the FOSS community is starting to say the same, it's time for them to finally admit that Bill Gates turned out to right in the end.


"An Open Letter to Hobbyists", 1976 (he was 20).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Open_Letter_to_Hobbyists

In short it says: I can't make you pay me, but I'm calling you a thief, so you should pay me anyway, or else I'll call you a thief again. Other people get paid, so I should be paid too because I like money.


Change "thief" to "free rider" and it's exactly what the shared source / post-open license folks are saying.




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