D should disallow forward references

[Walter Bright]

Adam D. Ruppe wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 26, 2009 at 03:05:07PM -0300, Leandro Lucarella wrote:
>> Sure, you can also grab the LDC frontend if you want a DMDFE with some
>> extra patches, but that's not the point. The point is you *can't* do
>> a 'patchdmd' without permission. And as far as licencing goes, I really
>> can't understand how Walter can give anyone rights to redistribute a
>> (modified) BE, if he is not the one owner of the code.
> 
> How can someone give anyone rights to redistribute a GPL program when he
> himself doesn't own the copyright?
> 
> I can't take your GPL program and arbitrarily change the license to
> proprietary, and similarly (I assume) he can't take his proprietary license
> and change it to GPL.

That's right. I can give people licenses to the back end, but I cannot 
change the license. It's not the best situation, but it's not terrible, 
either. After all, most languages, even GPL ones, rely on one or a small 
group of people to act as gatekeepers of the 'official' version.