[musicale]

For CP/M it seems like it was more like bad luck and failing to predict the future:

> Kildall accepted, believing that IBM's new system (like its previous personal computers) would not be a significant commercial success.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Kildall

Bill Gates/Microsoft was also DRI's nemesis, from supplying a CP/M-86 clone to IBM to trying to torpedo DR DOS (which nonetheless lasted into the 2000s.)

If we consider DOS to be a version of CP/M(-86), then it is still in use to this day (and it's probably running on your phone or PC you have any old games that use DOSbox) - a remarkably successful run for any OS.