Larry Niven's Altair

[Fred Cisin]

On Thu, 20 Aug 2015, william degnan wrote:
>>> Gates does not care about personal use of MITS software, be
>>> realistic. B
> . . . 
> Be it right or wrong to use an unlicensed copy...Even back in 1976 MSOFT to
> my knowledge did not pursue legal action against end users for violation of
> its BASIC license, so why in 2015 presume MSOFT would start now?

That is so hurtful to say that he does not care.
On February 3 1976, he personally, not even staffing it out in 
Micro-Soft, sent out an open letter to hobbyists, saying that he cared.

http://www.digibarn.com/collections/newsletters/homebrew/V2_01/homebrew_V2_01_p2.jpg

He even explained that nothing would please him more than to hire ten 
programmers and deluge the hobbyist market with good software!
(I think that Bob Wallace was number ten)

He might not still be able to afford to live at the Albuquerque address 
that he included in the letter (I heard that he had to go back home to 
Seattle), but I'm sure that he would love to have somebody write to him, 
and maybe even offer to pay for a copy of the BASIC.