The Death of D. (Was Tango vs Phobos)

[Christopher Wright]

Walter Bright wrote:
> Lars Ivar Igesund wrote:
>> Walter Bright wrote:
>>> I have explained this to the main Tango developers on multiple
>>> occasions. It is their right and privilege to license Tango as they see
>>> fit, and I respect that and so have not spoken out on it before. But in
>>> this thread I am being cast as a roadblock, which I feel is a little
>>> unfair, so I will loosen my tongue and speak up a bit :-)
>>
>> And we have on equally many occasions told you that the code you need is
>> available. :)
> 
> I respectfully disagree. The Tango team has stopped short of providing a 
> license to use the Tango code in Phobos with a reciprocal agreement that 
> allows it to be distributed under the Phobos license. I also cannot 
> accept something vague, it has to be explicit.
> 
> I've dealt with lawyers many times, and spelling it out directly and 
> explicitly avoids a lot of future potential problems. Furthermore, if 
> Phobos has a wishy-washy legal pedigree, corporate lawyers will not buy 
> off on allowing D to be used in their companies.
> 
> This issue must be settled in advance of looking at Tango, not after the 
> fact.

 From phobos/phoboslicense.txt:

  *  Copyright (C) 2004-2005 by Digital Mars, www.digitalmars.com
  *  Written by Walter Bright
(followed by BSD license)

Those lines are an issue. Are you asking for copyright assignment? 
That's a bit much to ask.

An alternative problem is this:
  *  Placed in the Public Domain

A number of modules in phobos/internal are marked public domain. Are you 
asking for Tango's internals to be placed in the public domain? That 
also is a bit much to ask.

The BSD license is simply public domain with attribution. So what is the 
issue with using it? Phobos already uses it. Just with your name as the 
copyright holder.

Or do you want an agreement to allow relicensing of Phobos and Tango, 
let's say to incompatible licenses, and still allow Phobos and Tango to 
share code afterward?

It's unclear what you want or need that you don't already have.