>> 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. :-)
It may depend on whether he thinks he's out of his "Bitter financial
suffering" phase or not. To quote Calvin N. Moores, BYTE 1976:13 p.22.:
Bill Gates, in his "Open Letter to Hobbyists" mentioned earlier, tells
of his sad experience. According to Bill, he and two associates produced
the Altair BASIC, investing three man years and burning up $40,000
in computer time. It was to be sold on commision through MITS for
use with Altair computers. Gates now finds that many of the "users"
he talks to praise his BASIC very highly, but few of them can admit they
bought the copy they use. He is bitter, and says that the return for his
group was less than $2 an hour for the great amount of time they put
into the programming, debugging, and documentation required to make a
first class package.
--
Tim Shoppa Email: shoppa_at_trailing-edge.com
Trailing Edge Technology WWW: http://www.trailing-edge.com/
7328 Bradley Blvd Voice: 301-767-5917
Bethesda, MD, USA 20817 Fax: 301-767-5927
Received on Mon Nov 09 1998 - 14:34:32 GMT