Re:What Bill Gates was doing at 20 years old
by taborj on Wednesday April 18, 2018 @11:14AM
(#16868034)
MITS were not dependent on Gates and Allen for BASIC; MITS didn't even have plans to have a BASIC interpreter. They were approached by Gates and Allen out of the blue, and had no contract in place If they had not delivered, it wouldn't have set MITS back at all, though it certainly would have not helped sell more Altairs. MITS would have (likely was) free to entertain offers from other entities.
Re:What Bill Gates was doing at 20 years old
by coldtea on Wednesday April 18, 2018 @05:40PM
(#16871467)
MITS might not have been.
But parent said they can't see anything bad with the behavior (lying about having something you don't have, to make a sell, and rushing to actually make it before the delivery deadline).
And it's something that can surely have bad (to very bad) results -- if you fail to make it, or if you make something sub par to what you promised.
That would have made a client wait based on a lie ('we already have the software') and depend of them (when the client could have gone shopping elsewhere where they do have the software he needs), which could have cost millions in damages (e.g. failure to get its products to market, because the component he though he bought didn't actually exist when it was supposed to delivered)...