Re: Free the DMD backend
On Fri, 2016-06-03 at 07:12 +, Iain Buclaw via Digitalmars-d wrote: > On Friday, 3 June 2016 at 03:17:56 UTC, Eugene Wissner wrote: > > On Thursday, 2 June 2016 at 18:16:33 UTC, Basile B. wrote: > > > It's also that LDC is at front end 2.070 and GDC 2.067 ;););) > > > > > > GDC is actively maintained and it would have the latest > > features if more developers come, what would happen if it would > > be the reference compiler. > > LDC is also no more open than DMD. Go figure! Is that true. Debian and Fedora package LDC but they will not package DMD. GDC has to work within the GCC release framework so I think probably not a good context for the D reference compiler. -- Russel. = Dr Russel Winder t: +44 20 7585 2200 voip: sip:russel.win...@ekiga.net 41 Buckmaster Roadm: +44 7770 465 077 xmpp: rus...@winder.org.uk London SW11 1EN, UK w: www.russel.org.uk skype: russel_winder signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part
Re: Free the DMD backend
On Friday, 3 June 2016 at 03:17:56 UTC, Eugene Wissner wrote: On Thursday, 2 June 2016 at 18:16:33 UTC, Basile B. wrote: It's also that LDC is at front end 2.070 and GDC 2.067 ;););) GDC is actively maintained and it would have the latest features if more developers come, what would happen if it would be the reference compiler. LDC is also no more open than DMD. Go figure!
Re: Free the DMD backend
On Thursday, 2 June 2016 at 18:16:33 UTC, Basile B. wrote: It's also that LDC is at front end 2.070 and GDC 2.067 ;););) GDC is actively maintained and it would have the latest features if more developers come, what would happen if it would be the reference compiler.
Re: Free the DMD backend
On Thursday, 2 June 2016 at 18:09:15 UTC, Eugene Wissner wrote: 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/ikwvgrccoyhvvizcj...@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 It's also that LDC is at front end 2.070 and GDC 2.067 ;););)
Re: Free the DMD backend
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/ikwvgrccoyhvvizcj...@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
Re: Free the DMD backend
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/ikwvgrccoyhvvizcj...@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.
Re: Free the DMD backend
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/ikwvgrccoyhvvizcj...@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 .
Re: Free the DMD backend
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/ikwvgrccoyhvvizcj...@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.
Re: Free the DMD backend
On Tuesday, 31 May 2016 at 20:18:34 UTC, default0 wrote: I have no idea how licensing would work in that regard but considering that DMDs backend is actively maintained and may eventually even be ported to D, wouldn't it at some point differ enough from Symantecs "original" backend to simply call the DMD backend its own thing? Or are all the changes to the DMD backend simply changes to Symantecs backend period? Then again even if that'd legally be fine after some point, someone would have to make the judgement call and that seems like a potentially large legal risk, so I guess even if it'd work that way it would be an unrealistic step. Copyright law's answer to the Ship of Theseus paradox is that it's the same ship (i.e. derivative works are still covered under the original copyright).
Re: Free the DMD backend
On Wednesday, 1 June 2016 at 01:26:53 UTC, Eugene Wissner wrote: On Tuesday, 31 May 2016 at 20:12:33 UTC, Russel Winder wrote: On Tue, 2016-05-31 at 10:09 +, Atila Neves via Digitalmars-d wrote: […] No, no, no, no. We had LDC be the default already on Arch Linux for a while and it was a royal pain. I want to choose to use LDC when and if I need performance. Otherwise, I want my projects to compile as fast possible and be able to use all the shiny new features. So write a new backend for DMD the licence of which allows DMD to be in Debian and Fedora. LDC shouldn't be the default compiler to be included in Debian or Fedora. Reference compiler and the default D compiler in a particular distribution are two independent things. Exactly. But since we can legally distribute DMD in e.g. Debian, and DMD is the reference compiler, we will build software in Debian with a compiler that upstream might not have tested. Additionally, new people usually try out a language with the default compiler found in their Linux distribution, and there is a chance that the reference compiler and default free compiler differ, which is just additional pain and plain weird in the Linux world. E.g. think of Python. Everyone uses and tests with CPython, although there are other interpreters available. If CPython would be non-free, distros would need to compile with a free compiler, e.g. PyPy, which is potentially not feature complete, leading to a split in the Python ecosystem between what the reference compiler (CPython) does, and what people actually use in Linux distributions (PyPy). Those compilers might use different language versions, or have a different standard library or runtime, making the issue worse. Fortunately, CPython is completely free, so we don't really have that issue ;-)
Re: Free the DMD backend
On Tuesday, 31 May 2016 at 20:18:34 UTC, default0 wrote: I have no idea how licensing would work in that regard but considering that DMDs backend is actively maintained and may eventually even be ported to D, wouldn't it at some point differ enough from Symantecs "original" backend to simply call the DMD backend its own thing? The way I understand it is that no matter how different a derivative work (such as any modification to DMD) gets, it's still a derivative work, and is subject to the terms of the license of the original work.
Re: Free the DMD backend
On Tuesday, 31 May 2016 at 20:12:33 UTC, Russel Winder wrote: On Tue, 2016-05-31 at 10:09 +, Atila Neves via Digitalmars-d wrote: […] No, no, no, no. We had LDC be the default already on Arch Linux for a while and it was a royal pain. I want to choose to use LDC when and if I need performance. Otherwise, I want my projects to compile as fast possible and be able to use all the shiny new features. So write a new backend for DMD the licence of which allows DMD to be in Debian and Fedora. LDC shouldn't be the default compiler to be included in Debian or Fedora. Reference compiler and the default D compiler in a particular distribution are two independent things.
Re: Free the DMD backend
I have no idea how licensing would work in that regard but considering that DMDs backend is actively maintained and may eventually even be ported to D, wouldn't it at some point differ enough from Symantecs "original" backend to simply call the DMD backend its own thing? Or are all the changes to the DMD backend simply changes to Symantecs backend period? Then again even if that'd legally be fine after some point, someone would have to make the judgement call and that seems like a potentially large legal risk, so I guess even if it'd work that way it would be an unrealistic step.
Re: Free the DMD backend
On Tue, 2016-05-31 at 10:09 +, Atila Neves via Digitalmars-d wrote: > […] > > No, no, no, no. We had LDC be the default already on Arch Linux > for a while and it was a royal pain. I want to choose to use LDC > when and if I need performance. Otherwise, I want my projects to > compile as fast possible and be able to use all the shiny new > features. So write a new backend for DMD the licence of which allows DMD to be in Debian and Fedora. -- Russel. = Dr Russel Winder t: +44 20 7585 2200 voip: sip:russel.win...@ekiga.net 41 Buckmaster Roadm: +44 7770 465 077 xmpp: rus...@winder.org.uk London SW11 1EN, UK w: www.russel.org.uk skype: russel_winder signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part
Re: Free the DMD backend
On Monday, 30 May 2016 at 15:06:42 UTC, Saurabh Das wrote: LDC and GDC are quite a bit slower than DMD. Is this gap inherent in the structure of these compilers or can there be an LDC mode which compiles as rapidly as DMD? The difference in time between LDC and DMD is in the machine code generation that is much slower in LDC (LLVM) than in DMD, even in debug mode. We are looking into improving codegen speed, but it is not something straightforward. -Johan
Re: Free the DMD backend
On Sunday, 29 May 2016 at 10:56:57 UTC, Russel Winder wrote: On Sun, 2016-05-29 at 04:08 +, Joakim via Digitalmars-d wrote: […] It would be nice if that happened, but Walter has said Symantec isn't interested. Aren't ldc and GDC enough? This is why LDC should be seen in the D community as the main production toolchain, and Dub should default to LDC for compilation. No, no, no, no. We had LDC be the default already on Arch Linux for a while and it was a royal pain. I want to choose to use LDC when and if I need performance. Otherwise, I want my projects to compile as fast possible and be able to use all the shiny new features. Atila
Re: Free the DMD backend
On 05/31/2016 11:32 AM, Michael wrote: On Monday, 30 May 2016 at 15:06:42 UTC, Saurabh Das wrote: On Monday, 30 May 2016 at 14:51:48 UTC, Matthias Klumpp wrote: [...] LDC and GDC are quite a bit slower than DMD. Is this gap inherent in the structure of these compilers or can there be an LDC mode which compiles as rapidly as DMD? Can this be alleviated with something like rdmd for LDC? Does the old ldmd2 project still exist? ldmd2 is alive and well. It's included in the releases. rdmd works fine with it. But rdmd does not speed up compilation.
Re: Free the DMD backend
On Monday, 30 May 2016 at 15:06:42 UTC, Saurabh Das wrote: On Monday, 30 May 2016 at 14:51:48 UTC, Matthias Klumpp wrote: The case for DMD though is compile speed. It really changes the way one writes programs and makes it possible to write bash script-like functionality in D because of a rapid compile-run cycle. LDC and GDC are quite a bit slower than DMD. Is this gap inherent in the structure of these compilers or can there be an LDC mode which compiles as rapidly as DMD? Can this be alleviated with something like rdmd for LDC? Does the old ldmd2 project still exist?
Re: Free the DMD backend
On Monday, 30 May 2016 at 14:51:48 UTC, Matthias Klumpp wrote: On Sunday, 29 May 2016 at 10:56:57 UTC, Russel Winder wrote: On Sun, 2016-05-29 at 04:08 +, Joakim via Digitalmars-d wrote: […] It would be nice if that happened, but Walter has said Symantec isn't interested. Aren't ldc and GDC enough? This is why LDC should be seen in the D community as the main production toolchain, and Dub should default to LDC for compilation. This is something which has been asked on my blog[1], and I do agree that having a completely free-as-in-freedom reference compiler would be an awesome win for the D ecosystem, and would pretty much kill most of the issues we have at distros to package D stuff. D is very unique with its half-proprietary compiler. LDC seems to be a pretty good fit for replacing the backend. Shifting to LDC as reference compiler would basically mean to slowly give up DMD though, because other than being tested much, there wouldn't be a compelling reason to still use it when focus has shifted to LDC / GDC. In any case, this is definitely something for Walter and Andrei to decide, and I do have a feeling that this question might have been raised already in the past... [1]: http://blog.tenstral.net/2016/05/adventures-in-d-programming.html#comment-265879 The case for DMD though is compile speed. It really changes the way one writes programs and makes it possible to write bash script-like functionality in D because of a rapid compile-run cycle. LDC and GDC are quite a bit slower than DMD. Is this gap inherent in the structure of these compilers or can there be an LDC mode which compiles as rapidly as DMD?
Re: Free the DMD backend
On Sunday, 29 May 2016 at 10:56:57 UTC, Russel Winder wrote: On Sun, 2016-05-29 at 04:08 +, Joakim via Digitalmars-d wrote: […] It would be nice if that happened, but Walter has said Symantec isn't interested. Aren't ldc and GDC enough? This is why LDC should be seen in the D community as the main production toolchain, and Dub should default to LDC for compilation. This is something which has been asked on my blog[1], and I do agree that having a completely free-as-in-freedom reference compiler would be an awesome win for the D ecosystem, and would pretty much kill most of the issues we have at distros to package D stuff. D is very unique with its half-proprietary compiler. LDC seems to be a pretty good fit for replacing the backend. Shifting to LDC as reference compiler would basically mean to slowly give up DMD though, because other than being tested much, there wouldn't be a compelling reason to still use it when focus has shifted to LDC / GDC. In any case, this is definitely something for Walter and Andrei to decide, and I do have a feeling that this question might have been raised already in the past... [1]: http://blog.tenstral.net/2016/05/adventures-in-d-programming.html#comment-265879
Re: Free the DMD backend
On Sunday, 29 May 2016 at 10:56:57 UTC, Russel Winder wrote: This is why LDC should be seen in the D community as the main production toolchain, and Dub should default to LDC for compilation. Agreed. Especially, LDC supports more platform.
Re: Free the DMD backend
On Sun, 2016-05-29 at 04:08 +, Joakim via Digitalmars-d wrote: > […] > It would be nice if that happened, but Walter has said Symantec > isn't interested. Aren't ldc and GDC enough? This is why LDC should be seen in the D community as the main production toolchain, and Dub should default to LDC for compilation. -- Russel. = Dr Russel Winder t: +44 20 7585 2200 voip: sip:russel.win...@ekiga.net 41 Buckmaster Roadm: +44 7770 465 077 xmpp: rus...@winder.org.uk London SW11 1EN, UK w: www.russel.org.uk skype: russel_winder signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part
Re: Free the DMD backend
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: [...] It would be nice if that happened, but Walter has said Symantec isn't interested. Aren't ldc and GDC enough?
Free the DMD backend
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/ikwvgrccoyhvvizcj...@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
