Free the DMD backend

[Basile B. via Digitalmars-d]

On Sunday, 29 May 2016 at 03:52:33 UTC, open-source-guy wrote:
> Hi,
>
> this is a short ping about one of D's weaknesses - the 
> restrictive license for the backend. IIRC [1, 2, 3] the status 
> is that because some parts have been written by Walter while he 
> was employed by Symantec, it can't get an open-source license.
> When I read the backend license [4], I read the following:
>
>> 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.
>
> This actually means that all the 366 forks on Github would 
> require approval by Digital Mars.
> So luckily neither Symantec nor Digital Mars seem to bother 
> much about the license, so why can't it be changed in an free & 
> open source license that allows
> free redistribution and modification?
>
> This would also make it possible to distribute dmd 
> out-of-the-box on the two biggest Linux distributions Debian 
> and Ubuntu [5, 6].
>
> [1] http://tomash.wrug.eu/blog/2009/03/06/free-the-dmd/
> [2] 
> http://forum.dlang.org/post/ikwvgrccoyhvvizcjvxd@forum.dlang.org
> [3] 
> https://semitwist.com/articles/article/view/dispelling-common-d-myths
>
> [4] 
> https://github.com/dlang/dmd/blob/master/src/backendlicense.txt
> [5] 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debian_Free_Software_Guidelines
> [6] 
> https://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-archive.html#s-dfsg

Let's drop DMD and move to LDC (as the new DMD). Again and again 
people find bugs in the old backend. I know that it'll be hard 
for Bright to throw its little baby in the water but seriously 
it's not possible anymore.

Symantec is not interested to left its licence to Bright but they 
are probably neither interested to do anything with this bugged 
backend. Let's drop it.
If they wanna keep the rights on this ok. Let them their "so 
loved but not intersting" backend to them and move to something 
else for D default compiler.