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Re: Licensing, distributing Apple II system software, and IIcomputing

Patrick Schaefer <patrick.schaefer@topmail.de> wrote:

> Eric Shepherd schrieb:
> 
> > There's no confusion here.  I discussed the matter with Apple Software
> > Licensing and they made it clear that A2Central.com's license does not
> > include DOS 3.3.
> 
> Microsoft holds the copyright on some parts of DOS 3.3 and the biggest
> part of Applesoft BASIC. This may be the reason why Apple doesn't
> support a distribution. 

I wasn't aware of any Microsoft copyright over DOS 3.3.  Can you
elaborate on this?

They certainly don't have any rights to the RWTS component, which was
written by Steve Wozniak.

I can't see how they might be involved with the File Manager layer, so
that just leaves the command line and BASIC interfacing code.  Even this
seems unlikely, since it doesn't really do very much with BASIC, except
intercepting I/O (which is a feature of the monitor firmware anyway, and
has little to do with BASIC and nothing to do with Microsoft).

My understanding was that DOS 3.3 was written entirely within Apple, and
it isn't based on anyone else's disk operating system.

-- 
David Empson
dempson@actrix.gen.nz
Snail mail: P O Box 27-103, Wellington, New Zealand