Digital art is at the beginning of a seismic shift in value perception

A story about a paradigm shift from an earlier era 👇

2/ With software having eaten the world (h/t @pmarca), it's hard to believe how radical 21-year old Bill Gates was in 1976 when he wrote an open letter (in effect, a manifesto) declaring that software developers shouldn’t be ripped off for their work.

4/ It’s amazing to read this now — Gates as the underdog champion for a downtrodden creative class — but he threw himself and other developers in with creatives whose work had obvious value:

5/ “Now I ask you — does a musician have the right to collect the royalty on the sale of his records or does a writer have the right to collect the royalty on the sale of his books? Are people who copy software any different than those who copy records and books?”

6/ He went on to declare that such rampant piracy was stopping developers like him from investing the effort needed to build quality software. He pointed out the blatant unfairness of getting access to his work—the output of his time, effort, & investment—without getting paid.

7/ The parallels here with digital artists today are striking. Replace ‘musician’ or ‘writer’ with ‘artist’ and you’re speaking to the movement underway with those of us who believe in ownership of digital art and culture

8/ While today this feels quaint, at the time it was visionary. In 1976, software creation was mostly controlled by  manufacturers who buried its cost in hardware pricing. A profit incentive would compel developers to innovate alongside step-changes in hardware, aka Moore's Law.

9/ So, Gates' letter helped shift the paradigm around the value of software developers' work. Before it, software was seen as a cheap output relative to tangible products like semiconductors & microcomputers.

10/ This helped developers get fairly paid. This led to much better software, which in turn gave rise to the personal computer revolution. 35 years later, 
software has eaten the world, which wouldn't have been possible without this shift in value perception.

11/ Gates was right. Accepting the fact that software was worth paying for led to the emergence of a dynamic new economy. Besides all his many accomplishments, the paradigm shift spurred by his manifesto may be his greatest contribution to the world.

12/ If you’re curious, Gates' full “Open Letter to Hobbyists” is here:

12/ If you’re curious, Gates' full “Open Letter to Hobbyists” is here: 

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f9/Bill_Gates_Letter_to_Hobbyists_ocr.pdf

13/ Onwards to digital ownership of art and culture.

/end

PS: one of the things I still enjoy about X relative to FC are deeper threads. I'm experimenting to see how these land here. If you enjoyed this, let me know and I'll write more.

3/ If developers started being paid fairly, Gates argued, it would lead to a groundswell of software creation that would benefit everyone, from developers to hardware makers to the same hobbyists he called out as thieves.