DConf 2013 Closing Keynote: Quo Vadis by Andrei Alexandrescu

[Joseph Rushton Wakeling]

On Tuesday, 25 June 2013 at 15:44:02 UTC, Joakim wrote:
> Just finished watching Andrei's talk, it was up to his usual 
> high standard.
>
> I found the bits about professionalism a bit weird though: can 
> we really expect that from a volunteer effort?  I'm pretty sure 
> the A/V guys at the conference weren't volunteers, ie they were 
> paid.
>
> Along the line that QAston started, if you want more 
> professionalism, is there any interest in producing a 
> commercial D compiler?  If not, why not?  I notice that Walter 
> sells C and C++ compilers and source on digitalmars.com, but 
> strangely not D.
>  There are interesting business/source models nowadays where 
> you can be mostly open source and still sell a commercial 
> product.
>
> For example, Walter has often talked about optimizations in the 
> compiler that he'd like to get to.  There could be two 
> compilers: one where the source is fully publicly available, 
> another made available to paying users, which has additional 
> optimizations done either by Walter or others who he 
> supervises, but the source for those optimizations would not be 
> available publicly, though perhaps made available only to the 
> buyers under a non-OSS license.  After enough time has passed 
> for the optimization work to be paid for, the optimization 
> patches would eventually be merged into the slower, non-paid 
> version.  Android uses a similar hybrid model, which has 
> obviously been enormously successful.
>
> Another possibility is a bounty system, where users pledge 
> money towards needed features or bug fixes.  It'd basically be 
> a more distributed version of the hybrid approach I've outlined.
>
> I wonder what the response would be to injecting some money and 
> commercialism into the D ecosystem.


Given how D's whole success stems from its community, I think an 
"open core" model (even with time-lapse) would be disastrous. 
It'd be like kicking everyone in the teeth after all the work 
they put in.