[Barrera]

> The discussion is not over yet, but we believe this statement is equivalent to the well-known BSD or MIT licenses.

That's not now I'd interpret it. "Open Source" in my mind means that the software uses one of the OSI approved licenses. The quoted paragraph:

> 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.

is not even a license in the traditional sense. It defines nothing. Whatever rights it grants do not appear to be transferrable. Worst of all, it does not even mention source code.

If the owners of the CP/M source code want to make it open source, what's so hard about attaching the actual MIT or BSD licenses to a source distribution and publishing it?

[zozbot234]

This is most likely why the post mentions that "discussion is not over yet". They seem to be quite optimistic that we might be getting a proper FLOSS release.

[Cyberdog]

This sort of confusion could have been avoided if they had just said "the source code to this program is now free to distribute under the (MIT|BSD|GPL|etc) license" from the beginning. Nobody knew what exactly the intent of this novel "let this paragraph represent" approach was supposed to be, and now it just sounds like we have a slightly clearer idea.

No need to get cutesy with something as important as your license terms, people.

[nibbleshifter]

> what's so hard about attaching the actual MIT or BSD licenses to a source distribution and publishing it?

From experience in related things: lawyers.