I hate to be a spoil sport, but the implication in your mail that Bill Gates was
the first to produce commercial software and that before everything was free and open
is essentially wrong (despit what Levy says). This is only true of small systems.
AFAIR in the world of mainframes and IBM, licencing of software had been around since
the early 70s, when IBM unbundled the OS from the hardware. What Bill Gates did was
to follow their lead.
As much as I dislike MS and Bill Gates' tactics, he was clever enough to see markets
and to grab them with both hands and to respond to opportunities.
As much as I like free software, and I've written enough myself, I would not hesitate
to make millions out of software if I could. Aside from the good intentions, I have a
family to support and they come first, period.
Jonathan HB9/G4KLX
