Free the DMD backend

[Eugene Wissner via Digitalmars-d]

On Thursday, 2 June 2016 at 17:04:25 UTC, Basile B. wrote:
> On Sunday, 29 May 2016 at 03:52:33 UTC, open-source-guy wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> this is a short ping about one of D's weaknesses - the 
>> restrictive license for the backend. IIRC [1, 2, 3] the status 
>> is that because some parts have been written by Walter while 
>> he was employed by Symantec, it can't get an open-source 
>> license.
>> When I read the backend license [4], I read the following:
>>
>>> The Software is copyrighted and comes with a single user 
>>> license,
>> and may not be redistributed. If you wish to obtain a 
>> redistribution license,
>> please contact Digital Mars.
>>
>> This actually means that all the 366 forks on Github would 
>> require approval by Digital Mars.
>> So luckily neither Symantec nor Digital Mars seem to bother 
>> much about the license, so why can't it be changed in an free 
>> & open source license that allows
>> free redistribution and modification?
>>
>> This would also make it possible to distribute dmd 
>> out-of-the-box on the two biggest Linux distributions Debian 
>> and Ubuntu [5, 6].
>>
>> [1] http://tomash.wrug.eu/blog/2009/03/06/free-the-dmd/
>> [2] 
>> http://forum.dlang.org/post/ikwvgrccoyhvvizcjvxd@forum.dlang.org
>> [3] 
>> https://semitwist.com/articles/article/view/dispelling-common-d-myths
>>
>> [4] 
>> https://github.com/dlang/dmd/blob/master/src/backendlicense.txt
>> [5] 
>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debian_Free_Software_Guidelines
>> [6] 
>> https://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-archive.html#s-dfsg
>
> Let's drop DMD and move to LDC (as the new DMD). Again and 
> again people find bugs in the old backend. I know that it'll be 
> hard for Bright to throw its little baby in the water but 
> seriously it's not possible anymore.
>
> Symantec is not interested to left its licence to Bright but 
> they are probably neither interested to do anything with this 
> bugged backend. Let's drop it.
> If they wanna keep the rights on this ok. Let them their "so 
> loved but not intersting" backend to them and move to something 
> else for D default compiler.

I still would prefer if this "something else" would GDC .