Lack of open source shown as negative part of D on Dr. Dobbs

["Michaël]

On Wednesday, 9 May 2012 at 06:12:33 UTC, Paulo Pinto wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Dr. Dobbs has a nice editorial article about the rise of  new 
> native languages and it mentions
> D.
>
> http://www.drdobbs.com/architecture-and-design/232901652?cid=DDJ_nl_upd_2012-05-08_h&elq=60a2e0ea244a4667b97377cecc50110f
>
> Unfortunely the editor also points out that D is not fully open 
> source, without specifiying what
> exactly is not open source.
>
> I've already posted a comment about it, stating that there are 
> open source implementations and the
> complete code is available in Github.
>
> Still not visible, maybe waiting approval.
>
> --
> Paulo

When I looked back at D around 2009-2010, the fact that the 
reference compiler wasn't fully open-sourced and the alternative 
weren't quite there yet and/or available on all platforms really 
turned me off on the langage, the other thing was the 
Tango/Phobos split.

Now, I'm glad the situation improved and that we've got DMD 32 
and 64 bit on all platforms (except Windows), GDC is much more 
mature and the development is more open (Github ftw). But the 
fact that the reference compiler isn't fully open source still 
irks me. What if I want to submit a change or a fix to the 
langage that require to change the backend too ?

IMHO, DMD and LDC should merge but that's just me ;)