On Tue, 27 May 2025, Jim Hall via Freedos-devel wrote:
As a workaround, EDR-DOS added a copy of an email (I think from Bryan
Sparks) that said it was okay to use code derived from CP/M. And from
that, the EDR-DOS developers claimed that gave them a loophole to keep
working on EDR-DOS without worry, because OpenDOS comes from the
original DR-DOS, and DR-DOS derives from CP/M. But since CP/M was
released separately (and much earlier than DOS) I don't think "okay to
use code from CP/M" means the same thing "okay to use code from
OpenDOS." I suspect if this ever became a legal issue, a court would
probably not agree with their assumption, either.
And there's also the problem that the EDR-DOS code (what you linked to
on GitHub) still has comment blocks like this in it, clearly stating
the source code "contains confidential, proprietary and trade secret
information of Caldera" and that "any use or exploitation of this work
without authorization could subject the perpetrator to criminal and
civil liability":
;-----------------------------------------------------------------------;
; Copyright Work of Caldera, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
;
; THIS WORK IS A COPYRIGHT WORK AND CONTAINS CONFIDENTIAL,
; PROPRIETARY AND TRADE SECRET INFORMATION OF CALDERA, INC.
; ACCESS TO THIS WORK IS RESTRICTED TO (I) CALDERA, INC. EMPLOYEES
; WHO HAVE A NEED TO KNOW TO PERFORM TASKS WITHIN THE SCOPE OF
; THEIR ASSIGNMENTS AND (II) ENTITIES OTHER THAN CALDERA, INC. WHO
; HAVE ACCEPTED THE CALDERA OPENDOS SOURCE LICENSE OR OTHER CALDERA LICENSE
; AGREEMENTS. EXCEPT UNDER THE EXPRESS TERMS OF THE CALDERA LICENSE
; AGREEMENT NO PART OF THIS WORK MAY BE USED, PRACTICED, PERFORMED,
; COPIED, DISTRIBUTED, REVISED, MODIFIED, TRANSLATED, ABRIDGED,
; CONDENSED, EXPANDED, COLLECTED, COMPILED, LINKED, RECAST,
; TRANSFORMED OR ADAPTED WITHOUT THE PRIOR WRITTEN CONSENT OF
; CALDERA, INC. ANY USE OR EXPLOITATION OF THIS WORK WITHOUT
; AUTHORIZATION COULD SUBJECT THE PERPETRATOR TO CRIMINAL AND
; CIVIL LIABILITY.
;-----------------------------------------------------------------------;
So no, we aren't going to use EDR-DOS.
(Obligatory IANAL.)
I'm going to say I agree with this assertion; unless Sparks clarifies the
matter in our favor, I don't think anyone is going to legitimately
understand that he intended to open up the *DR DOS* sources by opening up
the CP/M sources, even though the line of derivation is clearly evident.
Again: *DR DOS is NOT fair game.*
MS-DOS 5.0 and 6.0, even though we do have them, are also not fair game
and this has never changed.
MS-DOS 4.01 _is_ fair game, provided we respect their license terms, which
are the X11/Expat license (and that's not a problem for us; it's
compatible with GPL2 and GPL3). I in fact loosely maintain a fork of
this, hoping that Microsoft and IBM would be able to officially open up a
later version; in the meantime I'd gladly take non-infringing patches that
add the functionality of later DOS versions to 4.01!
(I do have the capability of checking whether someone's code comes from
MS-DOS 5 or 6. Don't EVEN try that.)
-uso.
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