Imagesource: arith Public domain, Wikimedia Commons

CP/M is open source. Finally. Officially. And the like.

48 years after the release of the first versions by Digital Research Inc. you can now implement CP/M for virtually any architecture yourself, without having to reckon with having a fat lawsuit and the associated payments on your neck tomorrow. 😮‍💨

But seriously: CP/M played a crucial role long before DOS. Besides the initial versions for the Zilog Z80 and the Intel 8080, there were versions for Motorola's 68k, a port for 8086, and a number of compatible versions for various computers in the European Eastern Bloc.

Those who were allowed to call a C128 their own, also got to enjoy CP/M thanks to the Z80. And to this day there are madmen who produce CP/M compatible software. 🤓

We owe the news to Martin Maly aka retronic, without whom we probably would have just missed this groundbreaking event. Whew. That was close.