Free the DMD backend

[Basile B. via Digitalmars-d]

On Thursday, 2 June 2016 at 17:32:25 UTC, Eugene Wissner wrote:
> 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 .

When I look at how many messages there are on the GDC news group 
compared to LDC's one it's clear that GDC must has been more 
popular at a time. But this time is done.