DMD back end dev-kit

[Don]

John Reimer wrote:
> Hello Christopher,
> 
>> Robert Fraser wrote:
>>
>>> It appears I have been officially "pwned" here. You & Bill are right;
>>> GDC/LLVMDC isn't sufficient.
>>>
>> Or we could politely ask Walter to switch to llvm or gcc for the
>> backend for dmd. Hey, he actually changed opEquals to bool...
>>
> 
> 
> Similar has been suggested on several occasions.  If you take a peek at 
> previous postings in this group on the topic you will see his answer 
> which invariably is "no" with a short explanation about "tainting" (or 
> something similar). He doesn't want to look at any other compiler code 
> (opensource or otherwise). It's a self-imposed rule to simplify his 
> defense in any potential legal disputes, as I understand it, since he 
> appears to still be in the compiler business.
> 
> This is completely understandable, but I think it hampers D's progress 
> to some degree.  I'm not so sure we can ever get the backend by slapping 
> down some money, but I'd agree that it would be great if something were 
> done... moving to an opensource backend of one sort or another would be 
> extremely good for D.
> 
> Whether or not our request is successful, the statement made here (about 
> the donation) at least expresses how important it is to this community 
> to see an active opensource backend as part of the reference compiler.  
> But we probably shouldn't get our hopes up too much: the issue hasn't 
> budged one iota for quite a long time.  Yet, you never know. :)

IIRC, earlier this year, Walter said he was still trying to get it 
released, and did expect to be successful eventually.

I doubt that the problem has much to do with money. Murky legal issues 
could well be a major part of it. I recently got some code from my 
university days open-sourced, and it was extremely painful and slow -- 
even after getting in-principle agreement from *everyone* who could 
possibly be a copyright owner, none of them were certain that they had 
authority to approve its release.