Is D right for me?

[Jonathan M Davis]

On Wednesday, October 13, 2010 09:49:19 retard wrote:
> Tue, 12 Oct 2010 10:35:03 -0700, Jonathan M Davis wrote:
> > On Tuesday, October 12, 2010 04:08:13 Simen kjaeraas wrote:
> >> Jonathan M Davis <jmdavisProg at gmx.com> wrote:
> >> > Except that copying Tango is taboo. We want to avoid any possible
> >> > accusation of
> >> > copying Tango's code or design. There have been issues in the past
> >> > where Tango
> >> > devs thought that we might be doing that, and we just don't want to
> >> > risk any
> >> > sort of problems with the Tango folks. So, whatever we put in Phobos,
> >> > we do it
> >> > without looking at Tango.
> >> 
> >> You know, we might consider asking them for permission. That way, there
> >> should be no problems.
> > 
> > That can be done, to be sure, but we definitely can't just look at their
> > code - or even API - and create something similar, and from what I
> > recall, most cases of trying to get permission have a been a problem
> > (primarily due to there being multiple authors, I think). If there's
> > only one author for the stream code in Tango, that would be easier.
> > 
> > Regardless, the point is that we can't just go and look at the Tango API
> > and use it to give ourselves ideas on what to do with Phobos.
> 
> I doubt the copyright law can protect API definitions. In that case
> projects like Wine (winehq.org) couldn't exist. What do you think?

I wouldn't think that it would be a problem, but I'm no expert, and we've had 
problems in the past because Tango devs thought that proposed Phobos code was 
too similar to Tango. So, as I understand it, unless we get specific permission 
from the Tango devs which wrote a particular module, we're trying to not have 
code in Phobos which is an API which is at all close to Tango's. That way we can 
avoid potential conflicts with the Tango devs.

- Jonathan M Davis