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COPYING.md

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The licensing situation for CP/M is both complicated and very simple. The tl;dr version is that it's available under a liberal license equivalent to the MIT license.

The long version is: Digital Research sold it to Caldera, which sold it to Lineo, which had no use for it. They eventually agreed to release it under a liberal if rather ad-hoc license:

Subject:          Re: Unofficial CP/M Website/licensing of CP/M material
To:               gaby@gaby.de
Date sent:        Fri, 19 Oct 2001 10:36:31 -0600


Let this email represent a right to use, distribute, modify, enhance and
otherwise make available in a nonexclusive manner the CP/M technology as
part of the "Unofficial CP/M Web Site" with its maintainers, developers and
community.

I further state that as Chairman and CEO of Lineo, Inc. that I have the
right to do offer such a license.

Lineo and its affiliates, partners and employees make no warranties of any
kind with regards to this technology and its usefulness or lack thereof.

---
Bryan Sparks
CEO   Lineo, Inc.
http://www.lineo.com

(from The Unofficial CP/M Web Site.)

Unfortunately, this explicitly names The Unofficial CP/M Web Site as being the only point where the software could be made available. This was clearly an oversight, but unfortunately that's what the text said.

Luckily, as of 2022-07-06, Scott Chapman managed to get in touch with Bryan Sparks and get this clarified. The relevant wording is now superceded with this:

Let this paragraph represent a right to use, distribute, modify, enhance, and
otherwise make available in a nonexclusive manner CP/M and its derivatives.
This right comes from the company, DRDOS, Inc.'s purchase of Digital Research,
the company and all assets, dating back to the mid-1990's. DRDOS, Inc. and I,
Bryan Sparks, President of DRDOS, Inc. as its representative, is the owner of
CP/M and the successor in interest of Digital Research assets.

(see the attached PDF for the full text.)