Give me a break

Tom S h3r3tic at remove.mat.uni.torun.pl
Tue Jun 30 08:57:05 PDT 2009


Don wrote:
> Tom S wrote:
>> Don wrote:
>>> Tom S wrote:
>>>> Lutger wrote:
>>>>> Tom S wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> Yigal Chripun wrote:
>>>>> (snip)
>>>>>>> IMHO, the Tango vs. Phobos licensing issue is the biggest 
>>>>>>> bikeshed color
>>>>>>> problem in the D realm and the only people that can solve it are the
>>>>>>> tango devs and walter and co. of which Neither are willing to budge.
>>>>>> Uhhh... try listening to Tango folks sometimes. They really have 
>>>>>> tried.
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> If you can forgive my ignorance, what is the current Tango/Phobos 
>>>>> problem you see and refer to here? Is it related to D1 or also 
>>>>> concerns a possible  future Tango D2?
>>>>
>>>> I'm mostly a Tango user, not its developer, so I might be 
>>>> misinformed, but there doesn't seem to be any licensing issue except 
>>>> a conceptional one.
>>>
>>> Not true. The issue is that Tango uses the BSD license, which is 
>>> inappropriate for a standard library. Phobos2 now uses the Boost 
>>> license throughout. Because of the licensing issue, Andrei and Walter 
>>> won't look at any Tango code.
>>> This could be fixed quite simply by adding the Boost license to the list
>>> of Tango licenses (it should replace BSD in my opinion).
>>
>> BSD is just one of two options for Tango. What's wrong with AFL v3.0?
>> http://dsource.org/projects/tango/wiki/License
> 
> AFL v3.0 Section 9.
> If You distribute or communicate copies of the Original Work or a 
> Derivative Work, You must make a reasonable effort under the 
> circumstances to obtain the express assent of recipients to the terms of 
> this License.
> 
> ---
> Richard Stallman's comment on this was:
> [ snip ]
> ----

Thanks for explaining this! I was not aware of this clause. The 
wiki/License page for Tango puts AFL 3.0 in a much better light... I'll 
see what folks have to say on IRC :)


>>> The next biggest issue is module naming.
>>
>> Ouch :D I'll back away from that one quickly.
>>
>>
>>>> As for other issues - there's very little communication between the 
>>>> 'D Team' and the 'Tango Team'. Much could be learned and borrowed 
>>>> from it, but you don't see that in Phobos 2. Looks like we're going 
>>>> to end up with two 'utility libraries' that are not compatible with 
>>>> one another and instead of complementing each other, they offer ways 
>>>> to do the same things in a slightly different manner.
>>>
>>> Most of the competing functionality is with parts of Phobos which are 
>>> going to be ditched, eg the I/O system.
>>> In Phobos2, everything will be range-based -- and that introduces a 
>>> conceptual difference. (much like the STL in C++ vs the C libraries).
>>
>> How much is 'most' here? Modules like base64, bigint, boxer/variant, 
>> conv, date utils, filesystem ops, regex, traits, utf/unicode contain a 
>> lot of duplicate work.
> 
> Yes, AFAIK half of those will be ditched from Phobos. Some were 
> copy-and-paste from each other in the first place.

Cool! But if they are ditched, does it mean that they will have 
alternative implementations written in the nearest future or does it 
mean that Tango will actually complement Phobos?


-- 
Tomasz Stachowiak
http://h3.team0xf.com/
h3/h3r3tic on #D freenode



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