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Comment by m_for_monkey | Hacker News Reader

"Since the game was written in BASIC, you could list it out and see how it was written."

Bill Gates sold open source software! Incredible!

Just because you can read the source doesn't mean it's open source. You can get access to read the Windows source as well, that doesn't make it open source.

Officially published or leaked? What does it mean that 'open source is ot Opn Source' just because Donkey.bas was published a couple of years before FSF foundation or didn't comply some rules?

Microsoft makes the Windows kernel source available to a number of entities [0], but this source is not to be distributed freely. Open Source is usually construed to mean that the source, if you have it, can be distributed to freely.

[0] http://www.microsoft.com/resources/sharedsource/windowslp.ms...

You can get official Windows source, under restrictive conditions. Mainly used by governments, and some other large organizations.

The rest of your question is somewhat confusing.

Nitpick: Open Source is defined by the Open Source Initiative[1] (OSI), not by the FSF, which defines "Free Software".

In fact, "Open Source" was defined specifically as a way to drop the philosophical and ethical approach of "Free Software".

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_software

I didn't said it was free in any sense.

Parent is using the OSI's definition of open source.

[1]: http://www.opensource.org/

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