The Death of D. (Was Tango vs Phobos)

Christopher Wright dhasenan at gmail.com
Thu Aug 14 15:45:39 PDT 2008


Walter Bright wrote:
> 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.

If you had assigned your copyright to the Tango developers, then the 
files would read:
  *  Copyright (C) 2004-2005 by Sean Kelly, Lars Ivar Igesund, Don 
Clugson....

>> 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 allows anyone to do anything with the work as long as 
the authors get proper recognition. The one incentive to distribute the 
work is this recognition (besides encouraging others to help with the 
project).

If you're not going to take any Tango code and claim that it is yours, 
then the BSD license shouldn't cause any problems for you. If you 
require public domain, that implies that the BSD license causes problems 
for you. That implies that you're going to steal code.

I don't believe that you would do so. But by requiring Tango to be 
placed in the public domain, you're allowing everyone else to do so.

>> 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.

The BSD license is explicit permission. Or do you intend to redistribute 
Tango code without proper attribution?

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

You can license any merged modules under the BSD license, unless they 
are under some other license currently. Public domain isn't a license, 
and it's compatible with every license.



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