BASIC
From Maze
(Difference between revisions)
(High-level edits, new info on magazines) | (→Tiny BASIC and Copyleft) | ||
| Line 78: | Line 78: | ||
The first interpreter written in response to this call was by Dick Whipple and John Arnold and was developed in December 1975. To disseminate it, Albrecht and Allison decided to start a new serial, initially photocopied and originally intended to just run for a few issues. This was ''Dr. Dobb's Journal of Tiny BASIC Calisthenics and Orthodontia,'' which printed the code for the interpreter in octal machine language, ready for hobbyists to toggle in or (hopefully) key in on their Teletypes. It would be an understatement to call this publication a success. By January of 1976 the journal title was made more general by removing the explicit mention of ''Tiny BASIC,'' an editor was hired, and ''Dr. Dobb's'' launched as a newsletter offering code and articles on computing topics. The journal still exists online. It ran as a print publication until 2009, and shortly before that had a circulation of 120,000. In 1985, ''Dr. Dobb's'' published Richard Stallman's "GNU Manifesto." | The first interpreter written in response to this call was by Dick Whipple and John Arnold and was developed in December 1975. To disseminate it, Albrecht and Allison decided to start a new serial, initially photocopied and originally intended to just run for a few issues. This was ''Dr. Dobb's Journal of Tiny BASIC Calisthenics and Orthodontia,'' which printed the code for the interpreter in octal machine language, ready for hobbyists to toggle in or (hopefully) key in on their Teletypes. It would be an understatement to call this publication a success. By January of 1976 the journal title was made more general by removing the explicit mention of ''Tiny BASIC,'' an editor was hired, and ''Dr. Dobb's'' launched as a newsletter offering code and articles on computing topics. The journal still exists online. It ran as a print publication until 2009, and shortly before that had a circulation of 120,000. In 1985, ''Dr. Dobb's'' published Richard Stallman's "GNU Manifesto." | ||
| − | [More on Tiny BASIC, the canonical version 4, copyleft, etc.] | + | The development of Tiny BASICs continued after this first version. The fourth Tiny BASIC was by Li-Chen Wang and was called Palo Alto Tiny BASIC. It, too, was published initially in ''Dr. Dobb's.'' The source listing for this BASIC interpreter began: |
| + | |||
| + | <pre> | ||
| + | ;************************************************************** | ||
| + | ;* | ||
| + | ;* TINY BASIC FOR INTEL 8080 | ||
| + | ;* VERSION 1.0 | ||
| + | ;* BY LI-CHEN WANG | ||
| + | ;* 10 JUNE, 1976 | ||
| + | ;* @COPYLEFT | ||
| + | ;* ALL WRONGS RESERVED | ||
| + | ;* | ||
| + | ;************************************************************** | ||
| + | </pre> | ||
| + | |||
| + | This anti-copyright notice, while it does not feature the same use of "copyleft" as free software licenses did beginning in the late 1980s, was a jab at the closed culture of copyrighted, proprietary code. Because Wang chose to declaim copyright and reserve only the "wrongs" of the program, Palo Alto Tiny BASIC was able to serve as the basis for a commercial BASIC: Level I BASIC for the TRS-80, the influential microcomputer that was sold beginning in late 1978. | ||
== The Ethic vs. The Corporation == | == The Ethic vs. The Corporation == | ||
