The Death of D. (Was Tango vs Phobos)

[Steven Schveighoffer]

"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.

The BSD license of Tango is here 
http://www.dsource.org/projects/tango/wiki/BSDLicense
The license of Phobos is here 
http://www.dsource.org/projects/phobos/browser/trunk/phobos/phoboslicense.txt

These license texts are almost identical.  Both say that you can freely 
distribute the library in source or binary form, as long as you retain the 
license.  Two differences I see.  One, the Phobos license requires you to 
identify if you have changed the file.  Two, the Phobos license is more lax 
on requiring acknowledgement for binaries.  But you can't claim you wrote 
the binary completely without giving acknowledgement (at least, that's my 
interpretation).

I don't want to point any fingers, all I want to do is help resolve the 
situation.

>From Walter's camp, are these licenses really THAT different for you to 
believe that Phobos will be split into 2 licenses?  And even if it is, who 
cares?  The license is so similar, you simply include both for the Phobos 
runtime.  Many pieces of software have long lists of acknowledgements and 
licenses in their binary distribution (i.e. portions of this software 
copyright ...)

>From Tango's camp, the Phobos license is very similar, couldn't you allow 
licensing the runtime under the Phobos license as well?  I can't see how it 
would hurt, the Phobos license is only slightly more restrictive, but still 
is in the same spirit of the BSD license.  The one thing it lacks is an 
absolute requirement for acknowledgement in binary form, but it is required 
if you claim authorship of software or distribute in source form.  So nobody 
can go around claiming they wrote Tango, but if they claim any authorship of 
anything, Tango must be there.

Someone's got to give here, maybe there is just a lack of communication, or 
maybe there are deeper issues under the surface... To me, this is a no 
brainer.  If the license is the only thing stopping you, fix it.  I'm 
willing to help in any way I can.  Please set any bad blood aside for this 
one issue.

-Steve