# Microsoft BASIC **Entity class:** Software **Research spine:** [[research/Chronology of Signals, Silos, and Sovereign Software - Research|Chronology of Signals, Silos, and Sovereign Software]] ## Definition Microsoft BASIC was the interpreter Bill Gates and Paul Allen supplied for the Altair 8800, establishing software as a separately licensable product. ## Chronological Proximity It arrived in 1975 with the [[wiki/Altair 8800|Altair]] and preceded Microsoft's 1981 licensing of [[wiki/MS-DOS|MS-DOS]] to IBM. ## Relational Proximity It connected commodity microcomputer hardware to a reusable software layer and seeded Microsoft's later operating-system, enterprise, cloud, and defense relationships. ## Collection Routes [[collections/The Civilian Intelligence Marketplace|The Civilian Intelligence Marketplace]] · [[collections/Terrorism, Counterterrorism, and the Intelligence Environment|Terrorism, Counterterrorism, and the Intelligence Environment]] · [[wiki/Signals, Silos, and Sovereign Software|Signals, Silos, and Sovereign Software]] ## Sources / Provenance - [[research/Chronology of Signals, Silos, and Sovereign Software - Research|Chronology of Signals, Silos, and Sovereign Software - Research]].