On Thu, 10 May 2012 15:03:48 -0400, David Nadlinger <[email protected]>
wrote:
On Thursday, 10 May 2012 at 14:03:15 UTC, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
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.
What exactly would that buy us – I don't quite see how it would allow
Walter to work on it
That's why I said "assign the appropriate rights" to Walter. If Walter
owns the code, or can prove that nobody owns it (i.e. public domain), then
he can't be sued.
Now, if he has to rewrite large portions of it, it probably doesn't make
sense. I'm not sure of his position, I'm only speculating.
compared to, say, LLVM or GCC. And I don't buy the argument that Walter
can't look at the source of compilers not owned by him, because it
supposedly might make him vulnerable to copyright claims. Program
optimization is a quite well-researched topic, and besides, even if DMC
was somehow »tainted« by LLVM code, Walter would just have to add a
copyright note to the docs and could continue to distribute DMD under
his own terms – LLVM is BSD(-style) licensed
Wait till you hear the story of Walter and a room full of lawyers ;)
Besides, writing another new backend just for D/DMD would be pure
madness in terms of resources required – even LLVM, which is backed by a
bunch of companies, has a hard time against GCC in terms of
optimization, let alone ICC (on x86).
I honestly have no idea. Never looked at it before.
-Steve
