> Apple bundled BASIC for free because Woz wrote it himself, they had no software costs to recoup.

But in respect of Gates' letter, Woz didn't write that BASIC for free, he wrote it to enable his hardware platform and the time spent writing it is a cost/investment in the platform. Gates was just trying to make a business writing software without the hardware.

Also Apple are the ones that made Gates' sentiments a reality with the precedent set in Apple v Franklin (1983) defending the copyright of their BIOS software.