Saved Altair 4K BASIC

From: Lawrence Walker <lwalker_at_mail.interlog.com>
Date: Thu Nov 12 00:03:17 1998

On 10 Nov 98 at 22:42, Paul Braun wrote:

> Date sent: Mon, 9 Nov 1998 11:53:04 -0500 (EST)
> Send reply to: classiccmp_at_u.washington.edu
> From: cswiger <cswiger_at_wilma.widomaker.com>
> To: "Discussion re-collecting of classic computers" <classiccmp_at_u.washington.edu>
> Subject: Saved Altair 4K BASIC
>
> <<snip>>
> > Curious what the copyright situation on BASIC (or related
> > products) is? Certainly Gate's hasn't released it into
> > public domain.
> >
> >
> >
>
> Considering that BASIC was a language developed and written by somebody
> else, and that Gates & Allen simply took someone else's language and
> adapted it for a specific machine (like, say, for example, QDOS) (OK, they paid
> a little for it. But it started out as someone else's..) it still seems kinda odd that
> he would get so bent out of shape about somebody stealing a copy of the
> program that he himself stole.
>
> But who are we to question. He managed to turn that skill into a tidy sum.
>
> I love the comment someone on the list made about hiring 10,000 programmers
> and deluging the market with bad software. The only problem is, everyone just
> said "OK, Bill. Here's my checking account. Don't worry about fixing the bugs --
> kinda gives your software 'character'."
>
 Lest some of the younger people assume BG wrote BASIC , it was around since
being developed in 1963 at Dartmouth. To quote Paul Friedman from "Basic ....."
 "As long as you stick with the "core" statements of BASIC. you can move your
programs from computer to computer with relative ease." MS Basic was just one
version of an extended BASIC. ANSI Minimal BASIC was set up to try and
standardize BASIC. His MSBASIC was no great feat except that it became the most
used and familiar.

ciao larry
lwalker_at_interlog.com
Received on Thu Nov 12 1998 - 00:03:17 GMT