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
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Foundation announced in October 2013 that it would join the IATI. The IATI publications only include a subset of Gates Foundation grants (mainly excluding grants to developed countries), and contain few grants before 2009 (which are excluded from the table). The Gates Foundation states on the IATI Registry site that "reporting starts from 2009 and excludes grants related to our US programs and grants that if published could harm our employees, grantees, partners, or the beneficiaries of our work". The following table lists the top receiving organizations to which the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has committed funding, between 2009