BASIC

== The Ethic vs. The Corporation ==

In his very popular book ''Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution,'' Steven Levy describes the early history of home computing, and the development of BASICs for the Altair and its immediate successors, as a confrontation between an ethic of openness and sharing with the sort of corporate powers that were "a foe of the Hacker Ethic." (p. 227)

This portrayal has helped to set up what is remembered as the first major clash between free software and the corporate force of Microsoft: the "Open Letter to Hobbyists." Bill Gates wrote this confrontational letter in February 1976, declaring: "As the majority of hobbyists must be aware, most of you steal your software." It ran in the ''Altair Users' Newsletter'' as well as the newsletter of the Homebrew Computer Club. The letter spurred hundreds of responses, public and personal, causing the major early controversey in home computing.

There are a few complications to the most popular version of this clash, and to simplistic assignment of good and evil roles, just as there are complications in considering Altair BASIC as the bad guy when compared to TinyBASIC.

For one thing, neither Microsoft, Gates, or Allen is the party fingered in Levy's book as this "foe." That moniker is attached to Ed Roberts, the head of MITS, who was running a business with dozens of employees, many of whom would be around furiously working at any given hour to fulfill computer hobbyist's orders (and their dreams of computer ownership). "Micro-Soft" (the spelling had not been regularized by the time of the first letter) was at the beginning of 1976 simply two partners, both recent college drop-outs, one a teenager and other only slightly older. The company had hired other people, such as BASIC contributor Monte Davidoff, to work on projects, but it would not gets its first official employee until April 1976.

Copyright protection for computer programs, which Gates based his argument upon, was well-established by 1976. While sharing of programs certainly happened in users' groups and other contexts, today's concept of free software had not been articulated by that time. Richard Stallman published the GNU Manifesto and founded the Free Software Foundation in 1985, a decade after Altair BASIC. An argument has been made that, even though this discourse has been overlooked, some of the ideas important to the free software movement were first publicly stated in the columns of magazines and newsletters in response to Gates's letter. (Driscoll)

Gates wrote a "Second and Final Letter," replying to several objections raised to his first letter. In it, he went on to admit that, at least for certain types of programs, the free sharing of code is likely to become the norm. He even suggested that good "compilers and interpreters" (such as Microsoft's Altair BASIC) will enable such shared software:

<blockquote>In discussing software, I don't want to leave out the most important aspect, vis., the exchange of those programs less complex than interpreters or compilers that can be written by hobbyists and shared at little or no cost. I think in the foreseeable future, literally thousands of such programs will be available through user libraries. The availability of standardized compilers and interpreters will have a major impact on how quickly these libraries develop and how useful they are.</blockquote>

Gates and Microsoft certainly had a concept of software that would allow for it to be sold and controlled, but they were hardly seeking to eliminate hobbyist programming and the sharing of code. The company's principles did oppose the ethic of the Homebrew Computer Club and the People's Computer Company in some ways, but Microsoft ended up accomplishing some good with BASIC and facilitating the exchange of programs that Gates mentioned. Through licensing deals with computer companies, they did a great deal to bring BASIC not only out of the timesharing environment but also beyond the hard core of code-sharing enthusiast programmers.

== Commodore BASIC ==