[Year 12 Its] Re: Naming Conventions

[Con Zymaris]

On Sun, May 15, 2005 at 03:48:39PM +1000, Robert Timmer-Arends wrote:
> > > >
> > > > And before GW-BASIC there was MS-BASIC.
> > > >
> > > > And before MS-BASIC there was, well, let's see here...
> > > >
> > > There was Beginners All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code, or BASIC,
> created
> >
> > Eventually, yes.
> >
> > But well before MS-BASIC, there were a plethora of other BASICs. Thus
> > providing Bill Gates with the source code listings he needed to start a
> > company.
> >
> Sorry to be picky Con but there was no 'eventually'. I am talking about 1964
> when BASIC was first created  - running on mini-computers (or possibly even
> university mainframes) well before microprocessors were a twinkle in Mr
> Moore's eye.
> 
> MS-BASIC didn't start roaming the Earth until the 70's.


Yes... 1974-75. Agreed.

My point was that you seemed to imply, in your placement of text after
mine, that the sole precursor to MS-BASIC was Kurtz and Kemeny's BASIC,
from Dartmouth:

 http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Programming:_BASIC:_Introduction_to_BASIC:_History

I wanted to ensure that this forum understood that between K & K's
creation and Microsoft's re-implementation of others' BASIC, there were
doens of instantiations of BASIC. 

Additionally, 

- that Microsoft's was merely an implementation of just one variant, for
  micros.

- that a sizable portion of that codebase was in fact purloined from other
  sources.

- that even though he stole the code in the first place, Bill Gates had 
  the unmitigated gall to send out the following letter to hobbyists:

   http://members.fortunecity.com/pcmuseum/openltr.html

  decrying others' piracy of 'his' BASIC.
  
I'm not sure which bit confuses you.

Cheers,
 
Con Zymaris, Convenor
Open Source Victoria
http://www.osv.org.au/

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