Lack of open source shown as negative part of D on Dr. Dobbs

[Joseph Rushton Wakeling]

On 10/05/12 21:01, Jonathan M Davis wrote:
> On Thursday, May 10, 2012 10:16:10 Joseph Rushton Wakeling wrote:
>> Is that an issue for LLVM, which is BSD-licensed? I will understand if the
>> answer is, "I don't care, I don't even want to risk it."
>
> You'll have to talk to Walter if you want to know what exactly he is willing
> and isn't willing to do or what he can and can't do.

Sure.  I was just not sure if this particular suggestion had been raised and 
answered by Walter before.

> But if someone is going to consider dmd's backend's license to be an issue,
> they don't know enough to understand the situation properly, and I wouldn't
> expect anything with gdc and ldc to change that, since they'd _still_ have to
> know more to understand the situation properly. The fact that gdc and ldc
> _exist_ should solve the problem already, but we still get FUD. We'd still be
> getting FUD even if dmd's backend _were_ changed to the GPL, simply because it
> wasn't before.

The difference is that with an OS-licensed backend, you can counter FUD with one 
line -- "Here's the licence".  Without it, you have to go into the extended 
discussion we've just had, with so many opportunities for misunderstanding and 
confusion.  And yes, D would probably continue to suffer some FUD in the short 
term even with a backend licence change, but not in the long term -- look at the 
history of Qt for a comparison.

GDC and LDC solve _one_ problem -- the problem of developing D programs using 
purely open source tools.  But they leave remaining the problem of contributing 
to the core of D using purely open source.

That's not a problem that is urgent to address right now but it is a problem 
that probably needs to be addressed at some point.

> The situation can't really be fixed, so I don't see much point
> in trying to spend a lot of time and effort trying to fix it.

Not for now, certainly.  I do think, though, that it's worth having the detail 
of the issues involved laid out and understood.  That allows for some longer 
term planning and thinking around possible solutions.