After years of unofficial copies of Microsoft's 6502 BASIC floating around on the internet, the software giant has released the code under an open-source license. 6502 BASIC was one of Microsoft's first pieces of software, adapted in 1976 by Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates and early employee Ric Weiland to run on the 6502 CPU that powered the Apple II, Atari 2600, Nintendo Entertainment System, and Commodore 8-bit series.
As the software colossus explained in a Wednesday post, Microsoft founders Bill Gates and Paul Allen wrote the company's first product, BASIC for the Altair 8800 microcomputer and the Intel 8080 processor that powered it, in 1975. A year later Gates and Ric Weiland, Microsoft's second employee, ported Microsoft BASIC to the 6502 processor. In 1977, Commodore Computer licensed it for $25,000 and used Microsoft BASIC in its PET, VIC-20, and Commodore 64 machines.