Plan B for D

[David Wilson]

On 1/26/08, Christopher Wright <dhasenan at gmail.com> wrote:
> renoX wrote:
> > IMHO, D will either die or strive depending of Walter: if he manage to
> > do a similar thing for the language, the website, the documentation, the
> > library (and by this I don't mean Tango which started first by doing a
> > Phobos incompatible library!! *) then D will be the next C++, if he
> > doesn't then eventually D will fade away..
>
> If Walter dies, we'll all switch to GDC or llvmdc, but there will be a
> transition time while we search for people to run the project. We'll
> probably beg Andrei to get involved. Phobos, being licensed under the
> GPL, is safe. The Digitalmars website might be toast; I don't know its
> license.
>
> It would be best for D if there were attractive alternatives to DMD at
> that point, and a stable language spec. The current system has everyone
> using the same frontend, and that doesn't work terribly well if Walter
> dies suddenly.
>

I'd like to think we'd all be busily observing a moment's silence if
something bad happened; in any case the fragmentation pissing contests
and potential "land grab" that may occur afterward would only result
in better competition, implementations, and perhaps even just, more
innovative futures for the language. Consider what happened with
NetBSD.

In any case the last thing I'd want to see is some sort of "design by
committee" backup plan. D as a language is a work of art, mostly one
man's art. The same with Phobos. Let's just appreciate the benefits of
this while it lasts*. :)

* I'd like to think, well into the foreseeable future for even the
youngest of us.


David.