11 Nov
1998
11 Nov
'98
4:03 p.m.
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(a)u.washington.edu
From: cswiger <cswiger(a)wilma.widomaker.com>
To: "Discussion re-collecting of classic computers"
<classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu>
Subject: Saved Altair 4K BASIC
<<snip>>
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(a)interlog.com
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'."