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?
The source code Scott & co. released is word-for-word exactly the same as the pirated source code that's been floating around the Internet since at least 2009, and that pagetable.com wrote about in 2018:
This is what Microsoft slapped a license and an AI-slop README on. Sure, they can legally do that, they still own the copyright, but it's still pretty funny that they're essentially laundering pirated software.
The Zork I/II/III releases were even more blatant, with git commits adding license texts to existing pirate (or, if you prefer, archival) releases of the old source code:
It makes me wonder how many of Microsoft's other releases of old source code are laundered pirate releases, but I don't want to be too harsh. Microsoft's actions in these cases are considerably nicer than, say, what Warner Bros. did about pirated Mortal Kombat 2 source code (takedown), or Nintendo's continued legal hostility toward everyone everywhere. Maybe other companies could learn not to be so dog-in-the-manger about their precious Intellectual Property.
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).
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.
The Apple ][ basic interpreter placed its "get next token" routine down in the first 255 bytes of the computer's memory. Being there allowed for the machine instructions to be fetched twice as fast as "high memory". And "get next token" is definitely a good guess for hotpath.
I've benchmarked Applesoft and Commodore BASIC quite a bit and they benchmark exactly the same, so I'm not surprised. Both systems run at 1.023 MHz in NTSC. Of course, they are both derived from Microsoft's 6502 BASIC. I'm sure they're not cycle exact but they are close enough that BASIC doesn't show any difference.
16 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 42.1 ms ] thread[1] https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLowKtXNTBypFbtuVMUVXN...
https://www.pagetable.com/?p=774
This is what Microsoft slapped a license and an AI-slop README on. Sure, they can legally do that, they still own the copyright, but it's still pretty funny that they're essentially laundering pirated software.
The Zork I/II/III releases were even more blatant, with git commits adding license texts to existing pirate (or, if you prefer, archival) releases of the old source code:
https://github.com/historicalsource/zork1
https://github.com/historicalsource/zork2
https://github.com/historicalsource/zork3
It makes me wonder how many of Microsoft's other releases of old source code are laundered pirate releases, but I don't want to be too harsh. Microsoft's actions in these cases are considerably nicer than, say, what Warner Bros. did about pirated Mortal Kombat 2 source code (takedown), or Nintendo's continued legal hostility toward everyone everywhere. Maybe other companies could learn not to be so dog-in-the-manger about their precious Intellectual Property.
Microsoft BASIC for 6502 Microprocessor – Version 1.1 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45118392 - Sept 2025 (198 comments)
Related ongoing thread:
Microsoft open-sources "the earliest DOS source code discovered to date" - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48253386 - May 2026 (110 comments)