The Death of D. (Was Tango vs Phobos)

[Sean Kelly]

Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
> "Walter Bright" wrote
>> Lars Ivar Igesund wrote:
>>> Walter Bright wrote:
>>>> I have explained this to the main Tango developers on multiple
>>>> occasions. It is their right and privilege to license Tango as they see
>>>> fit, and I respect that and so have not spoken out on it before. But in
>>>> this thread I am being cast as a roadblock, which I feel is a little
>>>> unfair, so I will loosen my tongue and speak up a bit :-)
>>> And we have on equally many occasions told you that the code you need is
>>> available. :)
>> I respectfully disagree. The Tango team has stopped short of providing a 
>> license to use the Tango code in Phobos with a reciprocal agreement that 
>> allows it to be distributed under the Phobos license. I also cannot accept 
>> something vague, it has to be explicit.
>>
>> I've dealt with lawyers many times, and spelling it out directly and 
>> explicitly avoids a lot of future potential problems. Furthermore, if 
>> Phobos has a wishy-washy legal pedigree, corporate lawyers will not buy 
>> off on allowing D to be used in their companies.
>>
>> This issue must be settled in advance of looking at Tango, not after the 
>> fact.
> 
> The BSD license of Tango is here 
> http://www.dsource.org/projects/tango/wiki/BSDLicense
> The license of Phobos is here 
> http://www.dsource.org/projects/phobos/browser/trunk/phobos/phoboslicense.txt
> 
> These license texts are almost identical.  Both say that you can freely 
> distribute the library in source or binary form, as long as you retain the 
> license.  Two differences I see.  One, the Phobos license requires you to 
> identify if you have changed the file.  Two, the Phobos license is more lax 
> on requiring acknowledgement for binaries.  But you can't claim you wrote 
> the binary completely without giving acknowledgement (at least, that's my 
> interpretation).

This documentation requirement for binaries is why Tango adopted a dual 
license scheme.  In prior jobs I'd never be able to get a corporate 
lawyer to approve the use of a library containing such a requirement, 
and I wanted to be able to use Tango at work someday :-)

> From Tango's camp, the Phobos license is very similar, couldn't you allow 
> licensing the runtime under the Phobos license as well?  I can't see how it 
> would hurt, the Phobos license is only slightly more restrictive, but still 
> is in the same spirit of the BSD license.  The one thing it lacks is an 
> absolute requirement for acknowledgement in binary form, but it is required 
> if you claim authorship of software or distribute in source form.  So nobody 
> can go around claiming they wrote Tango, but if they claim any authorship of 
> anything, Tango must be there.

Releasing code into the public domain relinquishes any right to claim 
authorship as well.  I provided permission for Walter to use the runtime 
code as PD anyway, with the request that Phobos, at least, mention me as 
the author / contributor as appropriate.  But I think it's asking a lot 
that other Tango contributors do the same... particularly when all their 
contributions are user code.  If this permission were given, Walter 
could quite legally take all of Tango, relabel it as Phobos and 
distribute it as his own.  Not that I expect him to, but it would be 
within his rights to do so.


Sean