The Death of D. (Was Tango vs Phobos)

[Steven Schveighoffer]

"Walter Bright" wrote
> Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
>> I don't know the details of the license that Walter gave to the Tango 
>> devs,
>
> It's as I posted here. Tango may use any part of Phobos and *relicense* it 
> under the Tango license that I have the power to do.
>
>> but according to Phobos' license, no explicit permission is needed as 
>> long as you obey the license terms (which is pretty free in its terms), 
>> and in fact, Tango has the Phobos license in the runtime anyways, and 
>> obeys the license that ships with Phobos.  So I don't see how it is 
>> relevant that Walter gave a specific license to Tango, it was not 
>> required (at least that's my understanding).  It should be the same thing 
>> for Walter to accept Tango's modified version of the runtime (just 
>> include a copy of Tango's license).  My understanding is that Walter is 
>> against doing that for the purpose of avoiding having 2 licenses in 
>> phobos.  Both licenses are very similar, and completely compatible.  I 
>> see that Walter doesn't like it, but I don't see why it is a problem? 
>> Perhaps you could elaborate more, Walter.
>
> I don't know what more needs to be elaborated. There are two reasons for 
> this:
>
> 1. To ensure Phobos is free of any legal taint and any accusations of 
> stealing code.

Easy.  Don't say you wrote the Tango portions :)  Both Tango and Phobos are 
well established, it is not like you are starting from scratch, and 
especially, both are maintained in SVN on a third-party site, so it is easy 
to see who wrote what when.  I think you need to give a little on this...

>
> 2. To avoid the untenable issue of a single module in Phobos having 
> different license for different lines of code.

Different *lines* of code?  There is no reason to do that.  Keep the license 
per module.  If you make changes in a module that was licensed under Tango 
only, leave the license there.  From my understanding, any code that Tango 
used from Phobos still has the original license that Phobos provided.  I 
don't see a problem with that model.

>> Also, I would like to know specifically what Walter needs from the Tango 
>> team.  What could it be that he needs that the Tango team is against?
>
> What specifically I'd like from the Tango team is explicit permission for 
> the Phobos team to go over the Tango code and be able to copy/use whatever 
> portions of it are necessary to get the two libraries to have a compatible 
> core, and to relicense those parts under the corresponding Phobos license.

What is wrong with giving you permission to go over a given list of files 
that are specifically owned by people who don't mind you using their code? 
This should be adequate for creating a common core, as the core modules are 
well separated from the user portions.  And why must they be relicensed?  I 
don't really understand that part (but from Sean's messages, it looks like 
you already have that permission).

What if someone gathered all the appropriate files together in a single 
package, and had the Tango developers sign off that Sean was the sole owner 
of the files in that package?  Would that be enough?

> I have already provided a reciprocal agreement for the Tango team to use 
> Phobos.

Again, if this is the case, it was not used, because all of the 
Phobos-originated code (that I looked at anyways) still is licensed under 
the Phobos license.

-Steve