10 Nov
1998
10 Nov
'98
11:56 a.m.
Sam posted a copy of Mike Hayes' reply to Bill Gates' famous open letter
about piracy of Microsoft BASIC. Mike Hayes wrote:
I congratulate you and MITS upon being major
influences in the founding of
the computer hobby market. It's too bad you didn't get the profit from
your efforts that they did from theirs, but that's YOUR fault, not theirs
or the hobbyists. You underpriced your product.
I think Mike reached exactly the opposite conclusion that I did. Bill
priced BASIC too high. If the various versions had ranged in price from
(say) $50 to $150, instead of $150 to $350, I think he would have found
a lot more takers.
Chuck <cswiger(a)wilma.widomaker.com> posted a price list which contained
(in addition to three versions of Microsoft BASIC) the following item:
Altair DOS - $500
w/ purchase - $150
Did that actually exist? Was it written by Microsoft?
What made people think that a good BASIC interpreter and a Disk Operating
System were worth $350 and $500, respectively? Seems ludicrous even in
in 1998 dollars; in 1976 dollars that was utterly insane.
Eric