From: Paul Koning Sent: Thursday, August 20, 2015 7:48 AM To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Subject: Re: Larry Niven's Altair
> On Aug 20, 2015, at 10:30 AM, Jay Jaeger <[email protected]> wrote: >> On 8/20/2015 3:32 AM, Randy Dawson wrote: >>> I assume all the 8K, 4K BASICs are in public domain by now. The >>> demo for the kids will be the 15 minutes of paper tape, followed by >>> READY. >> Bad assumption. Things that were actually registered even if there >> was no notice, or published with a copyright notice would still be >> protected under U.S. copyright. > Depending on when. If it was published without notice, the key > question is whether publication occurred before Jan 1, 1978, or after. > After, notice does not matter; before, lack of notice means no > copyright. Sorry to take so long to chime in on all the rampant speculation, but I've had real work to attend to. The following is excerpted from the main source file of BASIC for the Altair, by Gates, Allen, and Davidoff. I have no further comment. 00100 MCSSIM(START) 00120 00140 TITLE BASIC MCS 8080 GATES/ALLEN/DAVIDOFF 00160 IFNDEF LENGTH,<PRINTX !!! MUST HAVE COM !! 00180 END> 00200 IF1,< 00220 IFE LENGTH,<PRINTX /SMALL/ > 00240 IFE LENGTH-1,<PRINTX /MEDIUM/ > 00260 IFE LENGTH-2,<PRINTX /BIG/ > 00280 IFE STRING,<PRINTX /NO $$/ > 00300 IFN STRING,<PRINTX /$$ $$/ > 00320 > 00340 SUBTTL VERSION 1.1 -- MORE FEATURES TO COME 00360 COMMENT * 00380 00400 --------- ---- -- ---- ----- --- ---- ----- 00420 COPYRIGHT 1975 BY BILL GATES AND PAUL ALLEN 00440 --------- ---- -- ---- ----- --- ---- ----- 00460 00480 00500 WRITTEN ORIGINALLY ON THE PDP-10 AT HARVARD FROM 00520 FEBRUARY 9 TO APRIL 27 00540 00560 PAUL ALLEN WROTE THE NON-RUNTIME STUFF. 00580 BILL GATES WROTE THE RUNTIME STUFF. 00600 MONTE DAVIDOFF WROTE THE MATH PACKAGE. 00620 00640 THINGS TO DO: 00641 SYNTAX PROBLEMS (OR) 00642 NICE ERRORS 00643 ALLOW ^W AND ^C IN LIST COMMAND 00646 TAPE I/O 00648 BUFFER I/O 00650 USR ?? 00652 ELSE 00660 USER DEFINED FUNCTIONS(MULTI-ARG,MULTI-LINE,STRINGS) 00680 MAKE STACK BOUNDARY STUFF EXACT 00700 (FOUT 24 FIN 14) 00720 PUNCH,DELETE,,, 00740 INLINE CONSTANT CONVERSION--MAKE IT WORK 00750 SIMPLE STRINGS 00760 * Rich Rich Alderson Vintage Computing Sr. Systems Engineer Living Computer Museum 2245 1st Avenue S Seattle, WA 98134 mailto:[email protected] http://www.LivingComputerMuseum.org/
