Microsoft has published the complete source code of BASIC 6502 and has released it as an open source under MIT license. This will allow anyone to use, modify and freely distribute the code of the first Microsoft software solution and a historical interpreter who taught to program millions of developers almost fifty years ago.
Microsoft’s change in front of the open source under the direction of Satya Nadella contrasts markedly with his hostile posture last decades when Steve Ballmer compared Linux with cancer and communism. Microsoft, the First World Software Company and Software Paradigm, manages Github, the largest open source repository in the world that it acquired in 2018.
Microsoft has become a Essential actor in the open source community. He is the main collaborator of Linux and Kubernetes; He opened the .NET development platform, sponsored organizations such as The Linux Foundation and Apache Software Foundation and has released as Open Source developments such as MS-DOS 4.0, Altair Basic or the GW-BASIC, which precisely descends from version 6502 and is included in the ROM of the IBM PC. If this was a key machine in the history of modern computing, by bringing personal computers to the mass public, we can say this interpreter for the programming section.
Basic 6502, released
Microsoft explains that the founders of Microsoft, Bill Gates and Paul Allen, wrote what was the First Commercial Product of the Companythe BASIC for the Altair 8800 microcomputer and the Intel 8080 processor that promoted it, in 1975. A year later, Gates and Ric Weiland, the second Employee of Microsoft, transferred the Microsoft Basic to the 6502 processor and hence its name. Subsequently, adaptations for popular machines of the time such as Commodore, Apple II or Altair were created.
The repository includes some notes on the history of Microsoft, indicating that Basic established the company “As a dominant force in personal computers software before MS-DOS or Windows” y “The licensing of this BASIC interpreter to multiple computer manufacturers was crucial for Microsoft’s initial business model”.
In 1977, Commodore Computer licensed it for $ 25,000 and used it in its PET, Vic-20 and Commodore 64 machines. Comodore sold millions of these last two machines, which contributed to the massification of computer science. As a curiosity, point out that Microsoft ‘lost’ the opportunity to earn millions of dollars If I had licensed it with a machine as a machine later, I did with MS-DOS, Windows or Office.
The published code (assembly language in 6,955 lines) It is version 1.1 of the programming language interpreter and contains additional corrections to the original, conditional compilation support for multiple pioneer computer systems (including Apple II, Commodore PET, Ohio Scientific and Mos Technology Kim-1) and a Bill Gates Easter egg hidden in Stordo labels.
Released low liciaany interested party can use it, modify it, redistribute it or simply examine the entrails of a software of historical importance of the beginnings of the era of personal computers. BASIC 6502 is available in Github.
