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The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
bysjames ( 1099 ) writes:
Some had pre-paid for Altair BASIC and it was months late. Gates didn't pay for the mainframe time used to run the emulator Altair BASIC was tested on. Technically, the code belonged to the university, but that legal term was never enforced. Several bugs were fixed before it was distributed.
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bybelmolis ( 702863 ) writes:
That isn't the story the way I have heard it (e.g. as on Wikipedia). Gates and Allen used Harvard facilities to adapt an Intel 8008 emulator that Allen had written for their Traf-o-Data project. There doesn't seem to have been any kind of contract that made that work the property of Harvard even if Harvard did not intend their hardware to be used for commercial projects. They polished it on time purchased from a time-sharing service.
bysjames ( 1099 ) writes:
Harvard, like all universities with a mainframe back then claimed rights to anything developed on their mainframe. It was part of the agreement signed on admission.
bybelmolis ( 702863 ) writes:
I was a year behind Gates at Harvard and don't remember signing any such thing. It's conceivable I've forgotten, but any evidence of this?
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