The economics of D

Bruce Adams tortoise_74 at yeah.who.co.uk
Fri Dec 21 10:41:29 PST 2007


On Fri, 21 Dec 2007 15:10:12 -0000, John Reimer <terminal.node at gmail.com>  
wrote:

>>>
>>> Walter,make it gnu if u pass on.  i dont trust anyone in particular to  
>>> carry the torch.
>>  (channeling Walter)
>> "It is gnu already.  GDC."
>>  --bb
>
> Hmm... is it?  I thought that it wasn't unless all copyright is passed  
> to  GNU... that was the main issue of why GNU will not include it in  
> GCC.  They won't accept the code, and maintain it, unless they own all  
> rights to it. And Walter wasn't willing (understandably) to relinquish  
> all rights to them.  GDC is developed independently of GNU.
>
> -JJR

That makes sense. The DMD front end is open source but not copylefted.
 From the dmd license:

"If you send any messages to Digital Mars, on either the Digital Mars
newsgroups, the Digital Mars mailing list, or via email, you agree not
to make any claims of intellectual
property rights over the contents of those messages.

The Software is copyrighted and comes with a single user license,
and may not be redistributed. If you wish to obtain a redistribution  
license,
please contact Digital Mars."

^ So we don't even own our own messages. Somehow I'm not sure that part of  
it will hold
up in court.

However, the source code tells a slightly different story:

// Copyright (c) 1999-2006 by Digital Mars
// All Rights Reserved
// written by Walter Bright
// www.digitalmars.com
// License for redistribution is by either the Artistic License
// in artistic.txt, or the GNU General Public License in gnu.txt.
// See the included readme.txt for details.

readme.txt
"These sources are free, they are redistributable and modifiable
under the terms of the GNU General Public License (attached as gpl.txt),
or the Artistic License (attached as artistic.txt)."

So it looks like its public domain not copyleft unless you want it to be  
copyleft
by way of your changes, which would be slightly difficult to support  
legally.
That would explain GNU rejecting it.



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