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Wikipedia has a pretty extensive article on this famous letter: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Letter_to_Hobbyists

An interesting line from that article, which I hadn't previously seen:

> In early 1976 ads for its Apple I computer, Apple Inc made the claims that "our philosophy is to provide software for our machines free or at minimal cost"[23] and "yes folks, Apple BASIC is Free"[24]

Joel Spolsky had an interesting article on this idea [1], he said "smart companies try to commoditize their products' complements."

[1] http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/StrategyLetterV.html

Interesting how he predicts the reason for Sun demise.

Not really a prediction if it's something he was already observing.

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