Editing Michigan Terminal System (section)

==Licensing==
As of December 22, 2011, the MTS Distribution materials are freely available under the terms of the [[Creative Commons]] Attribution 3.0 Unported License (CC BY 3.0).<ref>[http://bitsavers.org/bits/univOfMichigan/mts/_COPYRIGHT.txt MTS Copyright, Warranty, and Limitation of Liability statement], Bitsavers.org, accessed 22 December 2011</ref>

In its earliest days MTS was made available for free without the need for a license to sites that were interested in running MTS and which seemed to have the knowledgeable staff required to support it.

In the mid-1980s licensing arrangements were formalized with the University of Michigan acting as agent for and granting licenses on behalf of the MTS Consortium.<ref>[http://bitsavers.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de/bits/univOfMichigan/mts/mtsDistDoc/d6.0/D6.0-MTS-DOC.txt "MTS Licensing Statement"], November 1986, Leonard J. Harding, [https://quod.lib.umich.edu/b/bhlead/umich-bhl-9551?byte=145563004;focusrgn=C01;subview=standard;view=reslist MTS (Michigan Terminal System), 1968-1996], Box 22, Computing Center records 1952-1996, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan</ref> MTS licenses were available to academic organizations for an annual fee of $5,000, to other non-profit organizations for $10,000, and to commercial organizations for $25,000. The license restricted MTS from being used to provide commercial computing services. The licensees received a copy of the full set of MTS distribution tapes, any incremental distributions prepared during the year, written installation instructions, two copies of the current user documentation, and a very limited amount of assistance.

Only a few organizations licensed MTS. Several licensed MTS in order to run a single program such as CONFER. The fees collected were used to offset some of the common expenses of the MTS Consortium.