DConf 2013 Closing Keynote: Quo Vadis by Andrei Alexandrescu

[Joakim]

I was wondering if Walter or Andrei would respond to this thread.

On Saturday, 29 June 2013 at 08:37:48 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
> I agree with your post, I just want to make a couple of minor 
> corrections.
What exactly do you agree with Luca about, considering all your 
"minor corrections" basically demolish all his points? ;)

Your C++ history was really interesting, as I first used it in 
'97, right when it was peaking.

> ZTC++ was cheap as dirt, and at the time people didn't mind 
> paying for compilers. Those days are over, though. People have 
> different expectations today.
There's no doubt that developers have been spoiled by all the 
free and shareware tools out there these days.

What do you think of my idea of segmenting the market though?  
Keep providing a free-as-in-beer dmd, like you are now, for the 
people who want it, while Remedy and others who want performance 
pay for a dmd that puts out more performant code, with those 
improvements slowly merged back into the free dmd over time.

If you are not interested in selling a paid compiler yourself, 
I've noted that there's nothing stopping someone else from doing 
this.  They can take the dmd frontend under the Artistic license, 
compile it with the BSD-licensed llvm backend and boost-licensed 
druntime and phobos, and sell a paid compiler, without any 
permission from you or any other D contributors.

You could not do anything legally to stop this, as the permissive 
OSS licenses allow it.  However, as one of the main authors of 
this code, do you have any preference for or against someone 
taking your code to do this?