At 08:10 PM 11/9/98 -0000, Eric Smith wrote:
>cswiger <cswiger_at_wilma.widomaker.com> wrote:
>> Curious what the copyright situation on BASIC (or related
>> products) is? Certainly Gate's hasn't released it into
>> public domain.
>
>No, and he got pretty upset about people redistributing it without
>authorization. But that was a few years ago; maybe he's mellowed out
>by now. :-)
See Claus Giloi's Altair / IMSAI emulator on my web page at
<
http://www.threedee.com/jcm/emu8080/index.html>. He was (is?)
a Microsoft employee. Offhand, I'd guess that Gates would be
very interested in an emulation that could run the old BASIC.
There's no reason for him to surrender the copyright; we could
merely ask for permission to redistribute. I think the PR aspect
would be a two-edged sword, though - the open source movement
would have a field day with the notion that Gates finally came
around and now allows free distribution of one of his products,
yet I'm sure Microsoft's PR agency could get some mileage from
his benevolence to the classic computer community.
- John
Received on Mon Nov 09 1998 - 14:30:31 GMT