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/[email protected]
[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
