Mass-enabling D => License question

[John Colvin via Digitalmars-d]

On Tuesday, 20 May 2014 at 20:44:57 UTC, Andre wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I like D due to its clear syntax and power. For a business 
> application developer what is really missing is a full blown 
> IDE which enables
> Rapid Application Development.
> => GUI
> => Database
> => Internet components
> => Refactoring
> => ... and a lot things more
>
> If I compare the time I need to develop a D application and a 
> delphi
> application there are several weeks between unfortunatelly
> (my experience).
>
> I wonder whether it is possible from a license point of view to
> develop an IDE for D and sell it? Of course there are license 
> issues
> due to fact that D must be integrated in the package but 
> someone would
> only pay for the IDE.
> On the other side, a good IDE will mass enabled D for business 
> application developer.
>
> If someone will create an IDE for D like Borland has done for 
> Delphi
> this would lead to an huge success for D in my opinion.
>
> What do you think? Would you appreciate such an IDE?
>
> Kind regards
> André

What licensing problems do you foresee? Bear in the mind that 
although the dmd backend has a restrictive licence that prohibits 
redistribution without permission, permission to redistribute is 
normally easy to get from Walter. Alternatively, if the clients 
computer does the download of dmd from dlang.org as part of the 
IDE installer then you circumvent the problem entirely.

To the best of my (limited) knowledge, the open source licenses 
used in all 3 main compilers do not prohibit redistribution 
and/or selling for profit.