Except, the hobbyist community back then was even further removed from commercialisation than the open source market is today.
The hobbyist community back then was based around clubs of people sharing their achievements; the computers they built, software they'd written and any neat tricks they'd invented (like using the electrical interference of the original Altar to play a tune on a radio http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgYhVnmeWrk ). The hobbyist community was very much driven by sharing ideas and code.
This is why people got annoyed at that letter. It not only flew against everything the community was built around, but also made some heavy criticisms about their members as well.
When you review that letter in the context of the community is was directed at and the time it was written, it seems even more out of place than it does today.
The hobbyist community back then was based around clubs of people sharing their achievements; the computers they built, software they'd written and any neat tricks they'd invented (like using the electrical interference of the original Altar to play a tune on a radio http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgYhVnmeWrk ). The hobbyist community was very much driven by sharing ideas and code.
This is why people got annoyed at that letter. It not only flew against everything the community was built around, but also made some heavy criticisms about their members as well.
When you review that letter in the context of the community is was directed at and the time it was written, it seems even more out of place than it does today.