History
Commodore licensed BASIC from Microsoft on a "pay once, no royalties" basis for US$25,000 (Different sources range this amount between $10,000 and $30,000). Bill Gates first offered it at a $3 per unit royalty fee but Jack Tramiel turned it down stating "I'm already married", said he would pay no more than $25,000 for a perpetual license and Gates later came back and accepted the deal. Commodore took the source code of the flat-fee BASIC and further developed it internally for all their other 8-bit home computers. It was not until the Commodore 128 (with V7.0) that a Microsoft copyright notice was displayed. However, Microsoft had built an easter egg into the version 2 or "upgrade" Commodore Basic that proved its provenance: typing the (obscure) command WAIT 6502, 1 would result in Microsoft! appearing on the screen. (The easter egg was well concealed—the message did not show up in any disassembly of the interpreter.)
Read more about this topic: Commodore BASIC
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