Microsoft's 6502 BASIC is now Open Source (2025)

(opensource.microsoft.com)

54 points | by GTP 2 hours ago

9 comments

  • Smalltalker-80 39 minutes ago
    In 1979, I made a program called VisiBase in this BASIC. It's a visual database modeled after VisiCalc. That won me a joystick in at a competition by the local computer store. :-) Still have the source, that works in an Apple 2 emulator. It's 13 K in ASCII (untokenized).
    • homarp 0 minutes ago
      put it in a public git somewhere!
  • rhdunn 51 minutes ago
    Ben Eater's 6502 series [1] uses MSBASIC for programming along with WozMon as the terminal interface.

    [1] https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLowKtXNTBypFbtuVMUVXN...

    • BeefySwain 41 minutes ago
      Is that the same BASIC as this?
  • ofrzeta 8 minutes ago
    I am really torn about this. Sure Microsoft is doing a lot of open source today (.NET core, VS Code and a bit of historic curiosities such as this one) but the "open letter to the hobbyists" still stands :) Release the Windows source code then we are talking.
  • PxP_ 6 minutes ago
    I doubt the .gitignore, README.md, and SECURITY.md files were created 49 years ago, as the GitHub repo indicates :D
  • rbanffy 30 minutes ago
    Maybe Apple can finally release MacBasic now that Microsoft can no longer stop licensing their Basic to the Apple II family.
  • qingcharles 42 minutes ago
    Sadly nothing in Scott's blog post about how they obtained the source. Was it still in Microsoft's archives? Did they happen upon some tractor-feed print-outs they had to type in by hand?
    • chihuahua 25 minutes ago
      It would also be interesting why it was open-sourced now. I assume if they had done the same last year, the resulting loss of revenue would not have destroyed the plucky little $3T upstart.
    • bdcravens 25 minutes ago
      I assume today typing in by hand is no longer needed, with text parsing from images being table stakes for LLMs.
  • amichail 29 minutes ago
    Do you think computing history would have been much different if Microsoft made a 6502 Pascal interpreter instead?
    • xxs 26 minutes ago
      Pascal is a lot broader language and won't fit in sub 16KB of ROM (even if you exclude monitor [call-151])
      • amichail 14 minutes ago
        Maybe they could have implemented a useful subset of Pascal.
  • iluvcommunism 11 minutes ago
    [dead]