The D license

Andrew Marlow marlow.andrew at googlemail.com
Wed Mar 10 06:41:52 PST 2010


I just downloaded and installed DMD for Windoze and had a look at the file license.txt installed in C:\D. It contains some rather worrying text:

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The Software is not generally available software. It has not undergone
testing and may contain errors. The Software was not designed to operate after December 31, 1999. 
---

This is followed by the usual sort of disclaimer. But it is not a good opening. And it closes with stuff that is even more worrying:

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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.
---

The FAQ taks about D being open source and it looks like the source zip may be downloaded (I haven't tried) but the warning above is a bit off-putting. Normally open source can be freely distributed, but not D, it seems. And what does the license entitle the user to do? It doesn't say. It doesn't even list things that are prohibited.

Can the wording of this license be improved please? IMHO it should identify more clearly what users can and can't do. And surely it is expected to work after December 1999. It wouldn't hurt to assign the copyright more clearly either rather than just say it is copyrighted but not who/what the copright holder is, e.g.

Copyright (c) 2010 Digital Mars Ltd. All rights reserved.

Regards,

Andrew Marlow




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