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 Gates Sr. Bill Gates Sr. William Henry Gates II (born November 30, 1925), better known as Bill Gates Sr., is an American retired attorney and philanthropist and author of the book "Showing Up for Life: Thoughts on the Gifts of a Lifetime". He is the father of Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates. One of a line of businessmen named William H. Gates, and sometimes called William Gates Jr. in his career, he is now generally known as William Henry Gates Sr. due to the greater prominence of his son William H. Gates III (Bill Gates). Gates was born in 1925 in Bremerton, Washington,