The Death of D. (Was Tango vs Phobos)

[Walter Bright]

Christopher Wright wrote:
> 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.

I've provided the same to Tango.


> 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.

Why is it a bit much to ask?


> The BSD license is simply public domain with attribution.

No, it is not. Public Domain code is not copyrighted and does not 
require a license.

> 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.

The problems are two:

1. Phobos has already been accused of stealing code from Tango. 
Therefore, I would like explicit permission from the Tango team. I am 
not going to take code from Tango and put it in Phobos without explicit 
permission from the Tango team. Any hint of Phobos not having a clean 
legal pedigree will impair its adoption.

2. Having multiple licenses for one source module is an untenable situation.