An overriding memory for those who used 8-bit machines back in the day was of using BASIC to program them. Without a disk-based operating system as we would know it today, these systems invariably booted into a BASIC interpreter. In the 1970s the foremost supplier of BASIC interpreters was Microsoft, whose BASIC could be found in Commodore and Apple products among many others. Now we can all legally join in the fun, because the software giant has made version 1.1 of Microsoft BASIC for the 6502 open source under an MIT licence.
This version comes from mid-1978, and supports the Commodore PET as well as the KIM-1 and early Apple models. It won’t be the same as the extended versions found in later home computers such as the Commodore 64, but it still provides plenty of opportunities for retrocomputer enthusiasts to experiment. It’s also not entirely new to the community, because it’s a version that has been doing the rounds unofficially for a long time, but now with any licensing worries cleared up. A neat touch can be found in the GitHub repository, with the dates on the files being 48 years ago.
We look forward to seeing what the community does with this new opportunity, and given that the 50-year-old 6502 is very much still with us we expect some real-hardware projects. Meanwhile this isn’t the first time Microsoft has surprised us with an old product.
Header image: Michael Holley, Public domain.
Now we hope that MS release windows 95, 98 and DirectX (up to DirectX 9) under MIT.
Forgot your meds again? 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂 Go touch the grass bro 😛
He we can hope.
man…it sounds like a pipe dream but i wonder if they shouldn’t actually do it. microsoft is losing their hegemonic position. they invented dot net in the late 90s with explicitly the same design goals and choices as android, but they stood still for 25+ years while android ate the meal they meant to prepare for themselves. and android is (somewhat) open source and that attribute has only helped google leap ahead of microsoft.
it really wouldn’t surprise me if microsoft tries to learn a lesson from this. i mean, who would have expected WSL 30 years ago?
the silver lining is that it will be too little too late and it won’t succeed and the few outsiders who bother to look at the source will claw out their own eyes but
Wasn’t that the software that made Bill Gates whine in his open letter to hobbyists?