IBM ROM BASIC or lack thereof

From: Derek Peschel <dpeschel_at_eskimo.com>
Date: Mon Oct 1 15:11:28 2001

On Mon, Oct 01, 2001 at 11:24:40AM -0700, Sellam Ismail wrote:
> On Sun, 30 Sep 2001, Russ Blakeman wrote:

> > If memory serves the one real thing that cloners couldn't duplicate, maybe
> > due to copyright, was the ROM BASIC but that they'd duplicated everything
> > else including the BIOS or a very good part of it. That pretty much led to
> > IBM losing a lot in the PC market.
>
> It should be pointed out that MS owned the copyright to BASIC, which is
> probably why it wasn't included on clones. They would have had to obtain
> a license from MS.

So does that mean that BASICA (ROM + disk additions) and GWBASIC (disk only)
shared features or even code?

-- Derek
Received on Mon Oct 01 2001 - 15:11:28 BST