An idea for commercial support for D

[Joseph Rushton Wakeling via Digitalmars-d]

On 06/01/15 23:32, uri via Digitalmars-d wrote:
>> The dmd backend is not under an OSS license, why haven't they left?  I suspect
>> there are not very many of the type of people you're talking about in the D
>> community.
>
> It's possible that you're right but I don't see it happening. The backend
> doesn't provide any benefit to GDC and LDC and Walter has a very good reason for
> closing the backend sources which is understood by all.

Small point: the DMD backend may not be released under a free software license, 
but it is not closed -- the source is available, development happens in the 
open, and in a de facto (rather than de jure) sense there is little to 
distinguish from an open source project.  The licensing situation is obviously 
unfortunate, but it makes little practical difference considering that the vast 
majority of D language development is in the freely-licensed frontend, runtime 
or standard library, and there are two excellent free backends available.

This is a pretty good example of what I have referred to elsewhere in this 
thread, about the contextual nature of objections to "non-free".