Re: [Freedos-user] CP/M "and derivatives" legal status clarified
> On at 2022-07-17 13:32 -0400, Travis Siegel wrote: > >[..] > > I remember when opendos was released as opensource, (I have a copy of it > > around here somewhere), but I thought DRDOS was released as freeware > > sometime after that, though I don't remember where I might have seen > > that. I do not have a copy of that, though until recently, I did have a > > copy of original floppy distribution of DRDOS, but that got lost in our > > most recent move (or perhaps that was novel dos which is essentially > > opendos now that I think of it). > >[..] > > Am I barking up the wrong tree, or is this just me misremembering things? On Sun, Jul 17, 2022 at 3:45 PM C. Masloch wrote: > > You aren't entirely right. There was the "OpenDOS" release, aka "Caldera > OpenDOS Machine Readable Source Kit (M.R.S) 7.01". It was redistributed > by the EDR-DOS project at drdosprojects.de (now down but the Wayback > Machine has the page [1]). This was "open" in name only though, and not > accepted as Open Source by the OSI nor Free Software by the FSF (nor by > me). The LICENSE.TXT file in this archive has some choice decisions like > these: > > > LIMITED LICENSE FOR EVALUATION, EDUCATIONAL AND NON-PROFIT USE > [..] Correct. The "OpenDOS" license was a "look but do not touch" license. It put a lot of restrictions on anyone who studied it. It was a very bad license. ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] CP/M "and derivatives" legal status clarified
On Sun, Jul 17, 2022 at 6:57 AM C. Masloch wrote: [..] >> "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." > >On the assumption that DR-DOS is included among the CP/M derivatives, >which would agree with the fact that DRDOS, Inc. did sell DR-DOS 7.xx >(and the shortlived DR-DOS 8.xx) and so had the rights to those, this >means that EDR-DOS is now free! I think it's great that DRDOS updated their statement on CP/M. I would have preferred he used a recognized open source license like MIT or GNU GPL or another license, rather than make his own statement here, but this is definitely a good step forward. Be careful not to carry it too far, though. Bryan's statement is only about CP/M. While he says "and its derivatives," my interpretation is this statement applies only to the CP/M source code, and derivatives from the CP/M source code as it exists now. I wouldn't infer that this statement extends to DR-DOS or EDR-DOS. >As for this being "not a proper FLOSS license", I think it is clear >enough that it allows usage, distribution, and modification, which is >all that is needed for free software. It is true that this is what >people call a "crayon license", but a lot of free-ish DOS software does >have such. I consider this free software. True, a lot of "DOS freeware" does have a statement like this. Note that the GNU GPL 1.0 was published in 1989. (The Open Source Initiative was started in 1998.) But people have been making "DOS freeware" since 1981, seven years before the GNU GPL. So there literally wasn't an "open source" or "Free software" license to use back then. But that's not the case today. There are a lot of good, established, and recognized open source licenses, including BSD, GNU GPL, MIT, Apache 2.0, and others. I think it would have been better for DRDOS to release CP/M under a recognized license (MIT seems to match their intent). As I've learned over time, making up your own license statement like this can make things unclear later on. I made that mistake once and I've regretted it. Best to use a license that's already recognized. But I'm glad that DRDOS made this step; any step forward is good. Questions arise when you consider if you can re-use the CP/M source code in another project that uses a recognized open source license - or if you want to re-use code from another project (under an open source license) to improve CP/M. Of course, these questions about code sharing are probably moot anyway, because I'm sure the CP/M source code is entirely assembly, and you don't just simply "copy/paste" assembly code like this from one project into another project. Jim ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] CP/M "and derivatives" legal status clarified
On at 2022-07-17 13:32 -0400, Travis Siegel wrote: On 7/17/2022 7:56 AM, C. Masloch wrote: On the assumption that DR-DOS is included among the CP/M derivatives, which would agree with the fact that DRDOS, Inc. did sell DR-DOS 7.xx (and the shortlived DR-DOS 8.xx) and so had the rights to those, this means tht EDR-DOS is now free! For some reason, I'd thought DRDOS has been free for quite some time. I remember when opendos was released as opensource, (I have a copy of it around here somewhere), but I thought DRDOS was released as freeware sometime after that, though I don't remember where I might have seen that. I do not have a copy of that, though until recently, I did have a copy of original floppy distribution of DRDOS, but that got lost in our most recent move (or perhaps that was novel dos which is essentially opendos now that I think of it). But regardless, I seriously thought DRDOS was already free. I was sure you could download it from their site, unless that was opendos which (afaik) was a later version of DRDOS anyway. Am I barking up the wrong tree, or is this just me misremembering things? You aren't entirely right. There was the "OpenDOS" release, aka "Caldera OpenDOS Machine Readable Source Kit (M.R.S) 7.01". It was redistributed by the EDR-DOS project at drdosprojects.de (now down but the Wayback Machine has the page [1]). This was "open" in name only though, and not accepted as Open Source by the OSI nor Free Software by the FSF (nor by me). The LICENSE.TXT file in this archive has some choice decisions like these: > LIMITED LICENSE FOR EVALUATION, EDUCATIONAL AND NON-PROFIT USE The details on that indicate you have to belong to a few groups: if (a) you are a student, faculty member or staff member of an educational institution (K-12, junior college, college or library), a staff member of a religious organization, or an employee of an organization which meets Caldera's criteria for a charitable non-profit organization; or (b) your use of the Software is for the purpose of evaluating whether to purchase an ongoing license to the Software. The evaluation period for use by or on behalf of a commercial entity is limited to 90 days; evaluation use by others is not subject to this 90 day limit but is still limited to a reasonable period. The "source code grant" section also has wording such as: for personal, non-commercial use. This is not free software because you cannot use, redistribute, and modify it as you wish; you need to limit yourself to personal and noncommercial use, or merely "evaluate" the software. Other than that, DR-DOS 7.02 and 7.03 used to be sold by DRDOS, Inc., and there were partial versions (kernel, maybe shell) numbered as 7.04 and 7.05 used for some embedded jobs. There was also version 8, but due to FreeDOS copyright infringement that had to be changed. The developers at the time chose to completely burn any trace of version 8 instead of complying with the copyleft usage conditions for the included FreeDOS parts. As far as I know, none of these versions were free until now, and beyond that not even just gratis or allowed for noncommercial / personal use. Regards, ecm [1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20160326184121/http://www.drdosprojects.de/index.cgi/download.htm ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] CP/M "and derivatives" legal status clarified
On 7/17/2022 7:56 AM, C. Masloch wrote: On the assumption that DR-DOS is included among the CP/M derivatives, which would agree with the fact that DRDOS, Inc. did sell DR-DOS 7.xx (and the shortlived DR-DOS 8.xx) and so had the rights to those, this means tht EDR-DOS is now free! For some reason, I'd thought DRDOS has been free for quite some time. I remember when opendos was released as opensource, (I have a copy of it around here somewhere), but I thought DRDOS was released as freeware sometime after that, though I don't remember where I might have seen that. I do not have a copy of that, though until recently, I did have a copy of original floppy distribution of DRDOS, but that got lost in our most recent move (or perhaps that was novel dos which is essentially opendos now that I think of it). But regardless, I seriously thought DRDOS was already free. I was sure you could download it from their site, unless that was opendos which (afaik) was a later version of DRDOS anyway. Am I barking up the wrong tree, or is this just me misremembering things? ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] CP/M "and derivatives" legal status clarified
On at 2022-07-17 13:42 +0200, Liam Proven wrote: I wrote a story about this on the Register: https://www.theregister.com/2022/07/15/cpm_open_source/ Bryan Sparks (president of DRDOS Inc, which is still around) has given official permission for the modification and distribution of "CP/M and derivatives". It's on the Unofficial CP/M Web Site: http://www.cpm.z80.de/license.html Since CP/M-86 is a derivative of CP/M, as is DR-DOS, Concurrent DOS, Multiuser DOS and so on, this would seem to be an important legal precedent. No, it is not a proper FOSS license. That takes lawyers and lawyers cost money. But it's the next best thing and I suspect as good as we will ever get. That's great news, thank you! For the record, here is the exact wording that we get. The old wording from the 2001-10-19 email: 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. The new wording in the 2022-07-07 message: Not sure how to "officially" clear this up except to modify the original email content removing the constraint to the website/group that was mentioned. So, perhaps, this will suffice: "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." On the assumption that DR-DOS is included among the CP/M derivatives, which would agree with the fact that DRDOS, Inc. did sell DR-DOS 7.xx (and the shortlived DR-DOS 8.xx) and so had the rights to those, this means that EDR-DOS is now free! As for this being "not a proper FLOSS license", I think it is clear enough that it allows usage, distribution, and modification, which is all that is needed for free software. It is true that this is what people call a "crayon license", but a lot of free-ish DOS software does have such. I consider this free software. Regards, ecm ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
[Freedos-user] CP/M "and derivatives" legal status clarified
I wrote a story about this on the Register: https://www.theregister.com/2022/07/15/cpm_open_source/ Bryan Sparks (president of DRDOS Inc, which is still around) has given official permission for the modification and distribution of "CP/M and derivatives". It's on the Unofficial CP/M Web Site: http://www.cpm.z80.de/license.html Since CP/M-86 is a derivative of CP/M, as is DR-DOS, Concurrent DOS, Multiuser DOS and so on, this would seem to be an important legal precedent. No, it is not a proper FOSS license. That takes lawyers and lawyers cost money. But it's the next best thing and I suspect as good as we will ever get. -- Liam Proven ~ Profile: https://about.me/liamproven Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk ~ gMail/gTalk/FB: lpro...@gmail.com Twitter/LinkedIn: lproven ~ Skype: liamproven UK: (+44) 7939-087884 ~ Czech [+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal]: (+420) 702-829-053 ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Questions on Eric Auer's Terminal
On at 2022-07-17 11:07 +0200, C. Masloch wrote: Next problem: The cursor always stays in the lower left corner of the DOS screen. This is sort of documented in the manual [8], but I don't fully understand it. The idea was to either wrap at the end of line for a dumb terminal experience or try to stick to intended coordinates where possible. A slightly more elegant method would have been to let the terminal show the upper 80x25 chars of a 256x256 char coordinate system :-) I don't understand how the F6 setting is related to any of what you wrote. The cursor problem is the only major problem I could not fix yet. Makes line editing in lDebug more difficult than I'd like it to be because you can't tell where the debugger's cursor is at. Fixed the cursor problem [1] (at least for normal output with CR/LF/text, maybe not fixed for some ANSI escape things). Before this, all output during normal operation (ie not PROMPTPARM [2]) would simply write to the screen text memory wherever it pleased. The cursor wasn't *set* to stay in the lower corner, it just happened to be that after the DOS boot, config, and autoexec output the cursor usually *already* was in the lower corner. If you tried running CLS in FreeCOM and then started Terminal, the cursor would stay near the upper corner instead. I also fixed a bug I didn't even know was there before: Pressing F5 would cycle through the different CR policies (what to send when receiving an Enter keypress) but would not update the status item that's supposed to show which CR policy is in effect. The fix was simple [6]. Another bug caused the speed to be garbled in the status display before using F2, at least when running Terminal as "terminal.com a 4 ! &". The upper byte of the word [linespeed] was nonzero in that case. [3] So the remaining problems are: 1. sometimes part of long output is lost, 2. hang on STAU, Improved this by enabling the "prevent jammed keyboard" option already given before in the source. This is now included by default, though only actually used when the hshake variable indicates a jam (STAU indicator lights up). [4] That allows to spam F7 until the keyboard jam handling lets through the keypresses, allowing to change the F7 setting back and regain control of the terminal. 3. inverted video changes to brown, I missed previously that the default colour is yellow-on-blue, not light-white-on-blue as I assumed. Yellow is actually light-brown. That explains how we got to blue-on-brown. Anyway, I fixed the reset to actually set light-brown-on-blue [5] and the invert to properly invert the colours and intensity bits [6]. (RxANSI does it differently, as noted in the commit message here. Might be something to fix.) 4. and the cursor is glued to the bottom corner. As mentioned, mostly fixed. Before the first output is shown the cursor is not set yet though. And as mentioned may not be correct if ANSI escape sequences are involved. But it is already much better for my simple use case. Regards, ecm [1]: https://hg.pushbx.org/ecm/terminal/rev/14e39566145a [2]: https://hg.pushbx.org/ecm/terminal/file/bf9903fceae9/term-set.asm#l97 [3]: https://hg.pushbx.org/ecm/terminal/rev/bac5c6182290 [4]: https://hg.pushbx.org/ecm/terminal/rev/d48e0bf12ed9 [5]: https://hg.pushbx.org/ecm/terminal/rev/c64249cb36b5 [6]: https://hg.pushbx.org/ecm/terminal/rev/bf9903fceae9 ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Questions on Eric Auer's Terminal
On at 2022-07-16 23:17 +0200, Eric Auer wrote: Hi! That sounds like great question to discuss with other dosemu2 experts including you, as the serial port emu of dosemu2 has to do a large part of the work in what you want to do, I think? :-) It may be related to dosemu2 oddities, yes. However, some parts may be errors in Terminal, too. The terminal uses mostly BIOS if i remember correctly, to be slow but compatible? Yet that also means slower and less reliable comm. Actually it seems that Terminal mostly uses direct port and text-mode screen memory access. Regards, Eric PS: The terminal, I think, interprets some basic ANSI itself to be self-contained and faster, but as you say, it lacks features such as translating cursor keypresses to messages to the server. In general, all this has been a very long time ago, though. I added handling for arrow keys now [1], and also some other special keys [2] that are detected by lDebug's rawinput line editor [3]. (PageUp/PageDown/Insert are detected but don't do anything yet, except for beeping.) I also added simple support for the Bell codepoint, just calling the video ROM-BIOS interrupt 10h service 0Eh to handle the beeping [4]. Next problem: The cursor always stays in the lower left corner of the DOS screen. This is sort of documented in the manual [8], but I don't fully understand it. The idea was to either wrap at the end of line for a dumb terminal experience or try to stick to intended coordinates where possible. A slightly more elegant method would have been to let the terminal show the upper 80x25 chars of a 256x256 char coordinate system :-) I don't understand how the F6 setting is related to any of what you wrote. The cursor problem is the only major problem I could not fix yet. Makes line editing in lDebug more difficult than I'd like it to be because you can't tell where the debugger's cursor is at. The dropped debugger output was *mostly* fixed by enlarging the receive buffer to 2 KiB, from the prior 32 bytes [5]. If I do very long output such as from a "tp f" command, then it still sometimes loses part of the output, but normal commands with half a screenful of output or so do work now. I also fixed a bug I didn't even know was there before: Pressing F5 would cycle through the different CR policies (what to send when receiving an Enter keypress) but would not update the status item that's supposed to show which CR policy is in effect. The fix was simple [6]. Other than that I also added two convenience parameters to the command-line parsing that skip the intro [7] respectively change the default CR policy to the one I want [8]. So the remaining problems are: 1. sometimes part of long output is lost, 2. hang on STAU, 3. inverted video changes to brown, 4. and the cursor is glued to the bottom corner. Regards, ecm [1]: https://hg.pushbx.org/ecm/terminal/rev/479128a44413 [2]: https://hg.pushbx.org/ecm/terminal/rev/7ebcbaf69a06 [3]: https://hg.pushbx.org/ecm/ldebug/file/aaa006adaee0/source/lineio.asm#l2530 [4]: https://hg.pushbx.org/ecm/terminal/rev/564d2103c38d [5]: https://hg.pushbx.org/ecm/terminal/rev/621b8283ed1d [6]: https://hg.pushbx.org/ecm/terminal/rev/07bee5d55b39 [7]: https://hg.pushbx.org/ecm/terminal/rev/0405a5b9c62d [8]: https://hg.pushbx.org/ecm/terminal/rev/453eb5e82fff ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
