Bill Gates with the Office of the Secretary of the State of New Mexico. Gates never returned to Harvard to complete his studies. Microsoft's Altair BASIC was popular with computer hobbyists, but Gates discovered that a pre-market copy had leaked into the community and was being widely copied and distributed. In February 1976, Gates wrote an Open Letter to Hobbyists in the MITS newsletter in which he asserted that more than 90 percent of the users of Microsoft Altair BASIC had not paid Microsoft for it and by doing so the Altair "hobby market" was in danger of eliminating the incentive for
The Road Ahead (Bill Gates book) The Road Ahead (Bill Gates book) The Road Ahead is a book written by Bill Gates, co-founder and then-CEO of the Microsoft software company, together with Microsoft executive Nathan Myhrvold and journalist Peter Rinearson. Published in November 1995, then substantially revised about a year later, "The Road Ahead" summarized the implications of the personal computing revolution and described a future profoundly changed by the arrival of a global information superhighway. Gates received a $2.5 million advance for his book and money from subsidiary rights sales; all his proceeds were donated to "encourage the use of technology in education administered through