The Death of D. (Was Tango vs Phobos)
Walter Bright
newshound1 at digitalmars.com
Thu Aug 14 12:17:30 PDT 2008
Christopher Wright 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.
>
> From phobos/phoboslicense.txt:
>
> * Copyright (C) 2004-2005 by Digital Mars, www.digitalmars.com
> * Written by Walter Bright
> (followed by BSD license)
>
> Those lines are an issue. Are you asking for copyright assignment?
> That's a bit much to ask.
I've provided the same to Tango.
> An alternative problem is this:
> * Placed in the Public Domain
>
> A number of modules in phobos/internal are marked public domain. Are you
> asking for Tango's internals to be placed in the public domain? That
> also is a bit much to ask.
Why is it a bit much to ask?
> The BSD license is simply public domain with attribution.
No, it is not. Public Domain code is not copyrighted and does not
require a license.
> So what is the
> issue with using it? Phobos already uses it. Just with your name as the
> copyright holder.
>
> Or do you want an agreement to allow relicensing of Phobos and Tango,
> let's say to incompatible licenses, and still allow Phobos and Tango to
> share code afterward?
>
> It's unclear what you want or need that you don't already have.
The problems are two:
1. Phobos has already been accused of stealing code from Tango.
Therefore, I would like explicit permission from the Tango team. I am
not going to take code from Tango and put it in Phobos without explicit
permission from the Tango team. Any hint of Phobos not having a clean
legal pedigree will impair its adoption.
2. Having multiple licenses for one source module is an untenable situation.
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