BASIC
From Maze
(Difference between revisions)
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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 started 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;'' it printed the code for the interpreter in octal machine language, ready for hobbyists to toggle in or (hopefully) key in on their Teletypes. It is 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'' was launched as a newsletter offering code and articles on computing topics. In 1985, ''Dr. Dobb's'' further participated in the culture of sharing and openness by publishing Richard Stallman's "GNU Manifesto," a foundational document of the free software movement. The journal ran as a print publication until 2009, with a circulation of 120,000 shortly before that. It still exists online. | 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 started 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;'' it printed the code for the interpreter in octal machine language, ready for hobbyists to toggle in or (hopefully) key in on their Teletypes. It is 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'' was launched as a newsletter offering code and articles on computing topics. In 1985, ''Dr. Dobb's'' further participated in the culture of sharing and openness by publishing Richard Stallman's "GNU Manifesto," a foundational document of the free software movement. The journal ran as a print publication until 2009, with a circulation of 120,000 shortly before that. It still exists online. | ||
| − | The development of Tiny BASICs continued after this first version. The fourth Tiny BASIC, written by Li-Chen Wang, was called Palo Alto Tiny BASIC. It, too, was published initially in ''Dr. Dobb's.'' The source listing for this BASIC interpreter began: | + | The development of Tiny BASICs continued after Allison's first version. The fourth Tiny BASIC, written by Li-Chen Wang, was called Palo Alto Tiny BASIC. It, too, was published initially in ''Dr. Dobb's.'' The source listing for this BASIC interpreter began: |
<pre> | <pre> | ||
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</pre> | </pre> | ||
| − | While it does use "copyleft" in the same sense that free software licenses would beginning in the late 1980s, this anti-copyright notice 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 came on the market in late 1978. | + | While it does use "copyleft" in the same sense that free software licenses would beginning in the late 1980s, this anti-copyright notice was a jab at the closed culture of copyrighted, proprietary code. Because Wang chose to declaim "copyleft" 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 came on the market in late 1978. |
== The Ethic vs. The Corporation == | == The Ethic vs. The Corporation == | ||
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In ''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 battle between an ethic of openness and the sort of corporate powers who were "a foe of the Hacker Ethic" (227). | In ''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 battle between an ethic of openness and the sort of corporate powers who were "a foe of the Hacker Ethic" (227). | ||
| − | This portrayal has helped to set up what is often remembered as the first major clash between free software and the corporate will of Microsoft: Bill Gates' "Open Letter to Hobbyists." Published in February 1976 in the ''Altair Users' Newsletter'' as well as the newsletter of the Homebrew Computer Club, this confrontational letter gave Gates the opportunity to scold home computer users for the same kind of sharing that the original BASIC at Dartmouth encouraged. In the letter, Gates soundly declared, "As the majority of hobbyists must be aware, most of you steal your software." The letter spurred hundreds of responses, public and personal, causing the first major controversy in home computing. Many see it as the start of Microsoft's history of unfair dealing and of embracing and extending, a practice in which the company takes existing tools and ideas and creates its own version for competitive advantage. Decades later in the antitrust case against Microsoft, Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson would write that "Microsoft is a company with an institutional disdain for both the truth and for rules of law that lesser entities must respect." He was hardly the only one with this view by that point. Did Microsoft's rise to the height of corporate ruthlessness begin with this letter to hobbyists? | + | This portrayal has helped to set up what is often remembered as the first major clash between free software and the corporate will of Microsoft: Bill Gates' "Open Letter to Hobbyists." Published in February 1976 in the ''Altair Users' Newsletter'' as well as the newsletter of the Homebrew Computer Club, this confrontational letter gave Gates the opportunity to scold home computer users for the same kind of sharing that the original BASIC at Dartmouth encouraged. In the letter, Gates soundly declared, "As the majority of hobbyists must be aware, most of you steal your software." The letter spurred hundreds of responses, public and personal, causing the first major controversy in home computing. Many see it as the start of Microsoft's history of unfair dealing -- and of embracing and extending, a practice in which the company takes existing tools and ideas and creates its own version for competitive advantage. Decades later in the antitrust case against Microsoft, Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson would write that "Microsoft is a company with an institutional disdain for both the truth and for rules of law that lesser entities must respect." He was hardly the only one with this view by that point. Did Microsoft's rise to the height of corporate ruthlessness begin with this letter to hobbyists? |
Perhaps not. There are a few complications to the most popular version of this early clash, with too simplistic assignment of good and evil roles, just as there are complications in considering Altair BASIC as completely bad and TinyBASIC as pure and just. To begin with, neither Microsoft, nor Gates, nor Allen was the party originally fingered in Levy's book as the "foe" of the hacker ethic. That distinction belongs to Ed Roberts, the head of MITS, who was running a business with dozens of employees, many of whom would be furiously working at any given hour to fulfill computer hobbyists' orders (and their dreams of computer ownership). At the beginning of 1976, "Micro-Soft" (the spelling had not been regularized by the time of the first letter) was simply two partners, both recent college drop-outs, one a teenager and other only slightly older. The company had paid other people, such as BASIC contributor Davidoff, but would not gets its first official employee until April 1976. | Perhaps not. There are a few complications to the most popular version of this early clash, with too simplistic assignment of good and evil roles, just as there are complications in considering Altair BASIC as completely bad and TinyBASIC as pure and just. To begin with, neither Microsoft, nor Gates, nor Allen was the party originally fingered in Levy's book as the "foe" of the hacker ethic. That distinction belongs to Ed Roberts, the head of MITS, who was running a business with dozens of employees, many of whom would be furiously working at any given hour to fulfill computer hobbyists' orders (and their dreams of computer ownership). At the beginning of 1976, "Micro-Soft" (the spelling had not been regularized by the time of the first letter) was simply two partners, both recent college drop-outs, one a teenager and other only slightly older. The company had paid other people, such as BASIC contributor Davidoff, but would not gets its first official employee until April 1976. | ||
