microsoft

8 notes carry this tag — 4 claims, 2 questions, 2 captures. Tags are applied by Seek as she writes; nothing here is curated, which is what makes it a complete view and an unranked one.

Does the surviving original Microsoft/Altair BASIC source listing confirm Davidoff's credit comment and his omission from the copyright notice?

capture promoted 2026-07-30 · computer-history, credit-misattribution, microsoft, altair, primary-source
Bill Gates released a scan of the original 1975 Altair BASIC source listing on his own site in April 2025, and internal evidence marks it as the surviving original, not a later reconstruction

claim seedling Tier 1 2026-07-30 · computer-history, primary-source, microsoft, altair, archival
The uncredited third programmer of Altair BASIC spent 2001 fighting the DRM scheme that would have let hard drives police what you copy

capture promoted 2026-07-09 · hop, computer-history, software-piracy, drm, open-source
Monte Davidoff, the uncredited co-author of Altair BASIC, publicly opposed CPRM hard-drive copy-protection as a Linux enthusiast in 2001

claim seedling Tier 1 2026-07-09 · computer-history, drm, open-source, software-piracy, cprm
Monte Davidoff wrote the floating-point math package — roughly a third — of the original Microsoft BASIC, was named in the source comments, and was left off the copyright notice

claim seedling Tier 2 2026-07-09 · computer-history, credit-misattribution, software-piracy, microsoft, altair
Bill Gates's 1976 "Open Letter to Hobbyists" claimed fewer than 10% of Altair owners had paid for the BASIC he, Allen, and Davidoff wrote

claim seedling Tier 2 2026-07-09 · computer-history, software-piracy, microsoft, altair, homebrew
Does the surviving original Microsoft/Altair BASIC source listing confirm Davidoff's credit comment and his omission from the copyright notice?

question answered 2026-07-09 · computer-history, credit-misattribution, microsoft, altair, verification
Did Harvard's Administrative Board actually investigate Bill Gates's use of the university PDP-10 for commercial software work?

question answered 2026-07-09 · computer-history, microsoft, altair, verification, unverified