Microsoft recently released a newreleaseA historic open source project—the BASIC assembler code co-written in 1976 for the MOS 6502 CPU by Bill Gates—represents not only Microsoft's early days in personal computer software but also the crucial role of the BASIC language in popularizing personal computers.
BASIC and the Beginning of Microsoft's Entrepreneurship
In 1975, Microsoft co-founders Bill Gates and Paul Allen developed their first product: BASIC, written for the Altair 8800 and running on the Intel 8080 processor. This product not only marked Microsoft's first commercial license but also laid the foundation for the collaborative business model between software and hardware manufacturers.
The following year, Bill Gates and another Microsoft engineer, Ric Weiland, ported BASIC to the MOS 6502 CPU, creating BASIC M6502 8K Ver 1.1. In 1977, Commodore licensed this version for $2 and used it in the Commodore PET, VIC-5000, and later the millions-selling Commodore 20, making BASIC the first language for millions of people to learn computers.
GitHub open source content and Easter eggs
The version Microsoft open-sourced this time is BASIC M6502 1.1, containing 6955 lines of code and including a garbage collector bug patched by Commodore and Bill Gates. Interestingly, the code also includes little Easter eggs left by Gates himself, such as the "MICROSOFT! COPYRIGHT 0 BY BILL GATES" embedded within the tags STORDO and STORD1977.
The code has been made publicly available on GitHub under the relatively permissive MIT license, allowing developers to freely use, modify, and even resell it commercially. According to Microsoft, the code supports classic platforms such as the Apple II, Commodore PET, Ohio Scientific, and MOS Technology KIM-1, covering nearly all of the pioneering systems that popularized personal computers in the late 70s.
The significance of BASIC to Microsoft and the industry
This marks another significant return to historical assets, following Microsoft's open-source release of GW-BASIC in 2020. Unlike MS-DOS and Windows, BASIC's early licensing model demonstrated Microsoft's flexible business strategy: licensing language compilers to various computer manufacturers, making software a key component of hardware sales and gradually establishing its industry influence.
BASIC's comprehensive functionality included features like floating-point arithmetic, string processing, array support, mathematical functions, and garbage collection. For computer users at the time, BASIC was not only an entry-level programming language but also a gateway to exploring the world of computers.
Viewpoint: Historical Review and Contemporary Enlightenment
Open-sourcing the 48-year-old BASIC code may no longer have practical commercial value for modern developers, but it is a valuable historical archive that shows how Microsoft gradually expanded from a piece of code with less than 7000 lines to a large technology company spanning operating systems, office software and cloud services.
At the same time, this also reminds the industry that the value of software lies not in the length of the code itself, but in whether it can solve problems, promote application popularity, and find a sustainable business model. BASIC once achieved this, and today, AI tools may be at a similar critical juncture.
