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> "...so printouts of code would be thrown in trash. And that's where Bill Gates found the source code for Basic interpreter, which he ported and it became the first Microsoft product"

Both sources you link to say Allen and Gates pulled listings of the PDP-10 operating system out (probably DEC's TOPS-10?) of the trash. BASIC is not an operating system. So your claim is debunked by your own sources.

"...digging out the operating system listings from the trash and studying those. Really not just banging away to find bugs like monkeys[laughs], but actually studying the code to see what was wrong."

https://americanhistory.si.edu/comphist/gates.htm

"...He and Bill would go “dumpster diving” in C-Cubed’s garbage to find discarded printouts with source code for the machine’s operating system..."

https://paulallen.com/Futurist/Microsoft.aspx

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outside1234 a day ago | parent | next [-]

And Apple stole a UI from Xerox Parc. Open AI stole everyone's content.

This is how the industry innovates

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exidy a day ago | parent | next [-]

This is a myth. Jobs negotiated access to PARC technology as part of a deal in which Xerox bought shares in Apple at $10/share[0], selling about a year later at $22/share. Those shares would be worth around $5 billion today.

Xerox did later sue Apple for IP infringement, however most of their claims were dismissed[1].

[0] https://web.stanford.edu/dept/SUL/sites/mac/parc.html

[1] https://arlingtonmnnews.com/articles/bits-and-bytes/xerox-ve...

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mmooss 20 hours ago | parent [-]

> Xerox bought shares in Apple at $10/share[0], selling about a year later at $22/share.

> [0] https://web.stanford.edu/dept/SUL/sites/mac/parc.html

I searched the cite for the 'share', '10', '22', 'sold, 'sell', 'bought', 'buy', 'purchase', and found nothing. ?

	▲	exidy 19 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Apologies, I was juggling multiple sources. The Xerox VC investment into Apple is a matter of public record, the figure of $10/share is widely quoted, including in the Walter Isaacson biography of Steve Jobs[0]. Exactly how and when Xerox disposed of its shares is not public record, but it's known to be around that timeframe and certainly Xerox made a profit. The book _Dealers of Lightning_ goes into more detail about the deal if you're interested[1]. [0] https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/21/why-your-computer-has-a-mous... [1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1101290.Dealers_of_Light...

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mycall a day ago | parent | prev [-]

Now AIs are stealing from AIs.

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breadwinner a day ago | parent | prev [-]

[flagged]

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pdw a day ago | parent | next [-]

That article is a bit confusing because it's using the term "BASIC" to refer to both the language and Microsoft's implementation. But what it's trying to say is that Microsoft's BASIC implementation was licensed by many computer companies (including Commodore and Atari) and that those companies changed and extended it in incompatible ways.

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breadwinner a day ago | parent [-]

[flagged]

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pdw a day ago | parent | next [-]

Bill Gates did not write it by himself, Paul Allen and Monte Davidoff also worked on it. And they did not have a finished product after 8 weeks -- only a demo. The first commercial release was "version 2", half a year later.

	▲	pcunite a day ago \| parent [-]
		Podcast with Monte Davidoff https://floppydays.libsyn.com/floppy-days-113-monte-davidoff... Starts after about the first 15 minutes.

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ThrowawayR2 a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

How would Bill Gates copy source code from a 36-bit minicomputer with 32 kilowords (no byte addressing) of memory and a time-sharing operating system to a 8 bit microprocessor with a completely different instruction set and 4 kilobytes of memory and no operating system, just bare metal? Even if he and Allen had had the source code for BASIC-10, which you haven't provided evidence of, it would be closer to a reimplementation than a port.

And DEC was in Massachusetts, Bill Gates went to high school in Washington. That would be one hell of a road trip to dig into DEC's trash.

	▲	breadwinner 21 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I think it was C-Cubed's trash, but it was DEC's IP. See: https://www.theregister.com/2000/06/29/bill_gates_roots/

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sitharus a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

None of us write programs from first principles, it's all based on code we've read before. If I was going to write a BASIC interpreter I'd read up on the basics of interpreters, literature which would include sample code, and look at other interpreters' code.

No matter where you think the code came from, the impact of Microsoft BASIC was huge, and they were first to the market.

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ForOldHack a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

BASIC was " BASIC, developed at Dartmouth College, was initially designed for and ran on a GE-225 mainframe computer paired with a Datanet-30 processor, which handled communications with Teletype terminals. " I got into the game on HP BASIC, also with teletype ASR-33s, I was only 9.

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a day ago | parent | prev [-]

[deleted]

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sanswork a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

That's not what that says at all. It says that the language was slightly different depending on the platform.

Microsoft basic wasn't the first basic interpreter which is a different claim than Microsoft basic source was copied from another interpreter.

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ThrowawayR2 a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

What part of that paragraph you quoted suggests that Microsoft BASIC wasn't original work?

	▲	a day ago \| parent [-]
		[deleted]

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daeken a day ago | parent | prev [-]

Those were their own ports, as per the page you just linked. They developed Microsoft BASIC.

"The Altair BASIC interpreter was developed by Microsoft founders Paul Allen and Bill Gates using a self-written Intel 8080 emulator running on a PDP-10 minicomputer."