Free the DMD backend

[Eugene Wissner via Digitalmars-d]

On Thursday, 2 June 2016 at 17:54:10 UTC, Basile B. wrote:
> On Thursday, 2 June 2016 at 17:32:25 UTC, Eugene Wissner wrote:
>> On Thursday, 2 June 2016 at 17:04:25 UTC, Basile B. wrote:
>>> 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.
>>
>> I still would prefer if this "something else" would GDC .
>
> When I look at how many messages there are on the GDC news 
> group compared to LDC's one it's clear that GDC must has been 
> more popular at a time. But this time is done.

Ok, if you say so :D