On Wed, 09 May 2012 19:03:01 -0400, Joseph Rushton Wakeling <[email protected]> wrote:
Re friends: I always think it's a good idea to have lots, and from as diverse a range of backgrounds as possible. I just don't see what _good_ it does to have the backend non-OS, given the possible harms it can do.
I don't think it's a matter of "good" vs. a matter of "reality". There are two driving factors here: 1. Walter is, for better or worse, the benevolent dictator for D. And he has history/familiarity with this backend. 2. Walter does not want to "taint" his knowledge of compilers with some other backend that would potentially harm his ability to write closed-source code for profit. He is very adamant about this. 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. *I* would love to see the reference compiler for D actually written in D completely, and fully open source. But I think the current situation is not very harmful at all -- The compiler is a tool, and one typically doesn't care about the tool itself vs what it generates. -Steve
