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

[Steven Schveighoffer]

On Thu, 10 May 2012 15:03:48 -0400, David Nadlinger <see at klickverbot.at>  
wrote:

> On Thursday, 10 May 2012 at 14:03:15 UTC, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:

>> I think the only real solution is for someone to write a good backend  
>> for
>> D from scratch, and then assign the appropriate rights to Walter. I  
>> think
>> if Walter did it himself, it leaves dmd open to lawsuit from the current
>> copyright holder of the backend, since Walter's knowledge is so
>> intertwined with that code.
>
> What exactly would that buy us – I don't quite see how it would allow  
> Walter to work on it

That's why I said "assign the appropriate rights" to Walter.  If Walter  
owns the code, or can prove that nobody owns it (i.e. public domain), then  
he can't be sued.

Now, if he has to rewrite large portions of it, it probably doesn't make  
sense.  I'm not sure of his position, I'm only speculating.

> compared to, say, LLVM or GCC. And I don't buy the argument that Walter  
> can't look at the source of compilers not owned by him, because it  
> supposedly might make him vulnerable to copyright claims. Program  
> optimization is a quite well-researched topic, and besides, even if DMC  
> was somehow »tainted« by LLVM code, Walter would just have to add a  
> copyright note to the docs and could continue to distribute DMD under  
> his own terms – LLVM is BSD(-style) licensed

Wait till you hear the story of Walter and a room full of lawyers ;)

> Besides, writing another new backend just for D/DMD would be pure  
> madness in terms of resources required – even LLVM, which is backed by a  
> bunch of companies, has a hard time against GCC in terms of  
> optimization, let alone ICC (on x86).

I honestly have no idea.  Never looked at it before.

-Steve