The economics of D

[Lutger]

Bruce Adams wrote:
  > That makes sense. The DMD front end is open source but not copylefted.
>  From the dmd license:
> 
> "If you send any messages to Digital Mars, on either the Digital Mars
> newsgroups, the Digital Mars mailing list, or via email, you agree not
> to make any claims of intellectual
> property rights over the contents of those messages.
> 
> 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."
> 
> ^ So we don't even own our own messages. Somehow I'm not sure that part 
> of it will hold
> up in court.

No, it just means you promise not to sue DM over content of messages, 
that's what it's for.

'The Software' here includes the backend which has a different license 
than the frontend as you see in the source.

There's a difference between license and copyright: although the 
front-end is GPL the copyright is owned by Walter Bright and probably 
some other people who have contributed. As has been said, GNU demands 
that copyright is signed over to them, which isn't even possible in some 
countries. Giving up this copyright means that Walter cannot ever 
release the frontend or something based on it with a different license, 
but GNU can.

btw. I'm not a lawyer.