DConf 2013 Closing Keynote: Quo Vadis by Andrei Alexandrescu

[Walter Bright]

On 6/29/2013 11:39 PM, Joakim wrote:
> What do you think of my idea of segmenting the market though? Keep providing a
> free-as-in-beer dmd, like you are now, for the people who want it, while Remedy
> and others who want performance pay for a dmd that puts out more performant
> code, with those improvements slowly merged back into the free dmd over time.

It won't work. Those days are gone.

> If you are not interested in selling a paid compiler yourself, I've noted that
> there's nothing stopping someone else from doing this.  They can take the dmd
> frontend under the Artistic license, compile it with the BSD-licensed llvm
> backend and boost-licensed druntime and phobos, and sell a paid compiler,
> without any permission from you or any other D contributors.
>
> You could not do anything legally to stop this, as the permissive OSS licenses
> allow it.  However, as one of the main authors of this code, do you have any
> preference for or against someone taking your code to do this?

Part of issuing it under a permissive license is I won't try to block someone 
from doing whatever they want to that is allowed by the license.