DMD Backend Long-term

[Nick Sabalausky]

"Robert Jacques" <sandford at jhu.edu> wrote in message 
news:op.vepzxsdx26stm6 at sandford...
> On Tue, 22 Jun 2010 16:47:14 -0400, BCS <none at anon.com> wrote:
>
>> Hello Robert,
>>
>>> On Mon, 21 Jun 2010 23:55:48 -0400, BCS <none at anon.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> The main issue (as I understand it) is adding windows style structured
>>> exception handling to LLVM.
>>>
>>
>> After a little digging it seems that LLVM legally CAN'T add SEH as MS 
>> has it under patent. I'm still digging to figure out how it could be 
>> patented without making SEH an irrelevant technology.
>>
>
> The patent seems to be Borlands's:
> USPTO patent #5,628,016 Patent held by Borland on compiler support for 
> SEH.
> From a Wine wiki page: http://wiki.winehq.org/CompilerExceptionSupport
>
> It does seem to expire on June 15, 2014, though and I assume DigitalMars 
> has a license, so a LLVM fork is not unreasonable.

Seems a weak reason. A programmer that's worried about infringing software 
patents can't write anything more useful than "Hello World". I'm seriously 
not convinced at all that it's even possible to write useful code that 
doesn't technically infringe on some software patent. As a programmer, 
either you accept the fact that what you do is inevitably going to trample 
software patents, or you just simply don't be a programmer. That's all there 
is.