I recall another programmer being irritated by the letter and writing his own basic interpreter and asking $5 for it (which was far less than what Gates was asking).
Yes, today there are open source versions of pretty much all developer tools (and that's something to celebrate, since I remember when a "cheap" C compiler was $500).
If this was in 1976 - $2000 for a cheap C compiler. I had a quick look at the price of the Intel C/C++ compiler - $699, but the annual renewal fee is $249. In 1976, that would be roughly $175.
Her is an article with estimates of the development cost of the Linux kernel.
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What price was Gates asking for?
I did a quick calculation using:
http://www.dollartimes.com/inflation/inflation.php
$5 in 1976 works out as just over $20 in 2013.
HNer wmf has left a comment below:
If this was in 1976 - $2000 for a cheap C compiler. I had a quick look at the price of the Intel C/C++ compiler - $699, but the annual renewal fee is $249. In 1976, that would be roughly $175.
Her is an article with estimates of the development cost of the Linux kernel.
http://www.linuxfoundation.org/sites/main/files/publications...
I had a quick peek for an estimation of the cost of a compiler, but no luck.