alephnull on 11 March 2009
I should also point out that Altair BASIC was at the center of the debate of whether or not software could be charged for thanks to that incident with that hobbyist group. The answer at the time was non-obvious. The laws in which software was made to be property had not yet been passed and if you think about it for a bit, this amounts to someone owning all rights to the use of a number.
