Re: DConf 2013 Closing Keynote: Quo Vadis by Andrei Alexandrescu
On Monday, 1 July 2013 at 17:45:59 UTC, Joakim wrote: Then they should choose a mixed license like the Mozilla Public License or CDDL, which keeps OSS files open while allowing linking with closed source files within the same application. If they instead chose a license that allows closing all source, one can only assume they're okay with it. In any case, I could care less if they're okay with it or not, I was just surprised that they chose the BSD license and then were mad when someone was thinking about closing it up. The trouble is, even very weak copyleft licenses like MPL and CDDL can result in licensing incompatibilities. Only by granting very permissive licensing terms can you guarantee that your software will be usable by the full range of free software alternatives. For what it's worth, I have also made the argument on many occasions that projects shouldn't pick permissive licenses unless they're happy to see their work turned into proprietary products. But if a developer releases software under a liberal license, saying "I'm doing this so that everyone can use it but please keep it free," I think they have a right to be pissed off when someone ignores their moral request. There's no doubt that even if they chose a permissive license like the MIT or BSD license, these communities work primarily with OSS code and tend to prefer that code be open. I can understand if they then tend to rebuff attempts to keep source from them, purely as a social phenomenon, however irrational it may be. That's why I asked Walter if he had a similar opinion, but he didn't care. Yes, the conscious choice of an extremely permissive license for druntime and Phobos is a different situation. It's completely right in this case to facilitate all forms of development and re-use, under all licensing scenarios. I still think it's ridiculous to put your code under an extremely permissive license and then get mad when people take you up on it, particularly since they never publicly broadcast that they want everything to be open. It is only after you talk to them that you realize that the BSD gang are often as much freetards as the GPL gang, just in their own special way. ;) It's a shame that you feel the need to resort to name-calling because someone has come to a considered moral or strategic position that's different from yours. It also doesn't really help your position -- you're better off just getting on with developing software using your strategy and showing how it serves free software in the long run. I wouldn't call closing source that they legally allowed to be closed antisocial. I'd call their contradictory, angry response to what their license permits antisocial. :) Personally speaking, I find there are a lot of things in life which I prefer to be legally permitted, but still nevertheless consider antisocial -- and I don't think there need be a contradiction there. http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=sprewell_licensing Note that this article was written when Android had less than 10% of the almost billion users it has today, by using a similar hybrid model, and I was thinking up these ideas years before, long before I'd heard of Android. My project was a small one, so it couldn't be a resounding proof of my time-limited version of the hybrid model, but it worked for its purpose and I'm fairly certain it will be the dominant model someday. :) Thanks for the interesting read. I think you have a point inasmuch as this is a model that clearly works very well from a business perspective where apps are concerned -- and if you're going to have open core, I'd rather it be one where the closed parts are guaranteed to eventually be opened up. Of course, this is not the same as moral approval :-) What I'd say, though, is that what works for apps isn't going to be what works for languages or their core development tools. Most apps seem to be single- or small-team developments, not community projects, they are targeting niche requirements, and ultimately they're being delivered to a target audience that's used to paying for software. On the other hand with a language your overwhelming goal is to grow the user community, and (unless you're Microsoft or Apple, who can dictate terms to software developers) the best way by far to do that is to secure the language quality while keeping the development tools available free of charge. You'll get more mileage out of monetising other things -- e.g. bug-fixing services, support, consultancy -- than you will out of restricting access to tools that enable people to use the language effectively. You also have to consider the user perspective. If I was offered a new language whose tools were delivered with open core terms, I would almost certainly refuse -- I'd feel unable to trust that I wouldn't at some point find all future releases locked up, leaving me with the
Re: DConf 2013 Closing Keynote: Quo Vadis by Andrei Alexandrescu
On Tuesday, 2 July 2013 at 14:40:42 UTC, Joakim wrote: You're really splitting hairs at this point. If you _allow_ almost anything, as most permissive licenses like the BSD or MIT license do, nobody is going to then ask permission of the community for every possible thing they might do, to see who "wants" it, particularly since the community hasn't stated anything publicly. Since the community likely has a variety of opinions, as you yourself just admitted, such a poll of "wants" would likely be meaningless anyway. Unless the particular community puts out a public statement of "wants" that most of them can get behind, which very few of them do, it is silly to talk about what they might "want" which isn't in the license. The license is essentially all that matters. The difference between what people allow and what people want is much more significant than just "splitting hairs". However, I agree that there is often no coherent set of "wants" in a community, which makes it hard to consider them meaningfully. However, I do believe there's a level of common courtesy that should be honoured when using other people's work in a significant project, including at the very least making them aware that you will be doing so (anonymously, if secrecy is important). I know many people will just take whatever they can get and give as little as they can, but that doesn't make it right. I suspect we will never see eye to eye on this. You are convinced that the letter of the licence is all that matters, I am not.
Re: DConf 2013 Closing Keynote: Quo Vadis by Andrei Alexandrescu
On Tuesday, 2 July 2013 at 09:59:19 UTC, John Colvin wrote: This is all a bit moot as I was making a general point, not specifically related to BSD. However, in their case, I think it is perfectly fine that some don't like closed source personally, but as a group they decide to endorse it. A group where everyone is forced to agree on everything isn't an organisation, it's a cult. Of course there will be a wide variety of opinions within any community but the point is those who push such permissively-licensed software but privately dislike closing of source, then lash out at those who try to do it, are being silly. I think what I'm really trying to say is this: A license is a description of what you will *allow*, not what you *want*. I personally like to take in to account what people *want* me to do, not just what they will *allow* me to do. You're really splitting hairs at this point. If you _allow_ almost anything, as most permissive licenses like the BSD or MIT license do, nobody is going to then ask permission of the community for every possible thing they might do, to see who "wants" it, particularly since the community hasn't stated anything publicly. Since the community likely has a variety of opinions, as you yourself just admitted, such a poll of "wants" would likely be meaningless anyway. Unless the particular community puts out a public statement of "wants" that most of them can get behind, which very few of them do, it is silly to talk about what they might "want" which isn't in the license. The license is essentially all that matters.
Re: DConf 2013 Closing Keynote: Quo Vadis by Andrei Alexandrescu
On Tuesday, 2 July 2013 at 05:21:35 UTC, Joakim wrote: On Monday, 1 July 2013 at 21:29:21 UTC, John Colvin wrote: On Monday, 1 July 2013 at 17:45:59 UTC, Joakim wrote: I wouldn't call closing source that they legally allowed to be closed antisocial. I'd call their contradictory, angry response to what their license permits antisocial. :) Just because you're doing something legal doesn't mean you're not being antisocial. Read my previous post. Of course it's possible for a license to technically allow something but for the authors to disapprove of it, not that its antisocial to simply do something they disapprove of. But, as I said earlier, the BSD crowd does not publicly broadcast that they disapprove of closing source. In fact, they will occasionally link to press releases about contributions back from corporations who closed the source. For people using the BSD license to then get mad when yet another person comes along to close source is the only "antisocial" behavior I'm seeing here. It'd be one thing if they publicly said that while the BSD license allows closing source, they're against it. Feel free to provide such a public statement, you won't find it. It's only after you talk to them privately about closing source that you realize how many of them are against it. As I've said repeatedly, I don't much care that their behavior is so "antisocial," :) as long as its legal to close source. But it is pretty funny to cast that tag on somebody else, who is simply doing what their license allows and what their press releases trumpet. It's a pretty psychopathic attitude to conflate legality and morality, it's effectively saying "I have the moral right to do whatever I can get away with" On the contrary, it's a pretty psychopathic attitude to make such claims about morality when 1. nobody was talking about morality 2. the BSD crowd doesn't publicly talk about their problems with closing source either, whether they think it's immoral or antisocial or whatever. This is all a bit moot as I was making a general point, not specifically related to BSD. However, in their case, I think it is perfectly fine that some don't like closed source personally, but as a group they decide to endorse it. A group where everyone is forced to agree on everything isn't an organisation, it's a cult. I think what I'm really trying to say is this: A license is a description of what you will *allow*, not what you *want*. I personally like to take in to account what people *want* me to do, not just what they will *allow* me to do.
Re: DConf 2013 Closing Keynote: Quo Vadis by Andrei Alexandrescu
On 1 July 2013 18:45, Joakim wrote: >> In other cases there may be a broad community consensus that builds up >> around a piece of software, that this work should be shared and contributed >> to as a common good (e.g. X.org). Attempts to close it up violate those >> social norms and are rightly seen as an attack on that community and the >> valuable commons they have cultivated. > > There's no doubt that even if they chose a permissive license like the MIT > or BSD license, these communities work primarily with OSS code and tend to > prefer that code be open. I can understand if they then tend to rebuff > attempts to keep source from them, purely as a social phenomenon, however > irrational it may be. That's why I asked Walter if he had a similar > opinion, but he didn't care. > > I still think it's ridiculous to put your code under an extremely permissive > license and then get mad when people take you up on it, particularly since > they never publicly broadcast that they want everything to be open. It is > only after you talk to them that you realize that the BSD gang are often as > much freetards as the GPL gang, just in their own special way. ;) > To be 'retarded' is to be held back or hindered in the development or progress of an action or process. F/OSS comes with no such hindrance, unlike some other model that people falsely advertise as Everything Open and Free. All the Time!* -- Iain Buclaw *except whatever I am selling.
Re: DConf 2013 Closing Keynote: Quo Vadis by Andrei Alexandrescu
On Monday, 1 July 2013 at 21:20:39 UTC, Walter Bright wrote: On 7/1/2013 2:04 PM, Brad Roberts wrote: Actually, Boost was specifically chosen because it didn't require attribution when redistributing. If BSD hadn't had that clause we probably would be using it instead. That was indeed another important reason for it. But we were well aware of and approved of the idea that people could take it and make closed source versions. It was always clear (and logical) to me why the core libraries were permissively licensed, but the no-need-to-give-attribution-for-non-source-distribution feature was a subtlety I hadn't considered before.
Re: DConf 2013 Closing Keynote: Quo Vadis by Andrei Alexandrescu
On Sunday, 30 June 2013 at 03:29:06 UTC, Walter Bright wrote: On 6/29/2013 5:08 AM, Joseph Rushton Wakeling wrote: True, distribution was mainly by physical mail. There was some via BBS's and Usenet, but these were severely limited by bandwidth. I'd receive bug reports by fax, paper listings, and mailed floppies. This was also the heyday of the BBC Micro in UK schools, and I remember well the shelves full of books of sample programs in BBC Basic. We had lots of fun typing them up, working out how they worked, and then twisting them to our more evil designs.
Re: DConf 2013 Closing Keynote: Quo Vadis by Andrei Alexandrescu
On Monday, 1 July 2013 at 21:29:21 UTC, John Colvin wrote: On Monday, 1 July 2013 at 17:45:59 UTC, Joakim wrote: I wouldn't call closing source that they legally allowed to be closed antisocial. I'd call their contradictory, angry response to what their license permits antisocial. :) Just because you're doing something legal doesn't mean you're not being antisocial. Read my previous post. Of course it's possible for a license to technically allow something but for the authors to disapprove of it, not that its antisocial to simply do something they disapprove of. But, as I said earlier, the BSD crowd does not publicly broadcast that they disapprove of closing source. In fact, they will occasionally link to press releases about contributions back from corporations who closed the source. For people using the BSD license to then get mad when yet another person comes along to close source is the only "antisocial" behavior I'm seeing here. It'd be one thing if they publicly said that while the BSD license allows closing source, they're against it. Feel free to provide such a public statement, you won't find it. It's only after you talk to them privately about closing source that you realize how many of them are against it. As I've said repeatedly, I don't much care that their behavior is so "antisocial," :) as long as its legal to close source. But it is pretty funny to cast that tag on somebody else, who is simply doing what their license allows and what their press releases trumpet. It's a pretty psychopathic attitude to conflate legality and morality, it's effectively saying "I have the moral right to do whatever I can get away with" On the contrary, it's a pretty psychopathic attitude to make such claims about morality when 1. nobody was talking about morality 2. the BSD crowd doesn't publicly talk about their problems with closing source either, whether they think it's immoral or antisocial or whatever.
Re: DConf 2013 Closing Keynote: Quo Vadis by Andrei Alexandrescu
On 7/1/2013 2:29 PM, John Colvin wrote: On Monday, 1 July 2013 at 17:45:59 UTC, Joakim wrote: I wouldn't call closing source that they legally allowed to be closed antisocial. I'd call their contradictory, angry response to what their license permits antisocial. :) Just because you're doing something legal doesn't mean you're not being antisocial. It's a pretty psychopathic attitude to conflate legality and morality, it's effectively saying "I have the moral right to do whatever I can get away with" (A nit: it is not illegal to break a contract's terms. You're quite right, though, that morality and legality are very different things, and are too often in contradiction.) Anyhow, the reason we have written contracts is because people often (and honestly) misremember or misinterpret verbally agreed upon terms. Having a written record is a lot better when the two parties find themselves in a dispute. There are many licenses to choose from, and we chose Boost knowing full well what was said (and not said) in it about closed source usage.
Re: DConf 2013 Closing Keynote: Quo Vadis by Andrei Alexandrescu
On Monday, 1 July 2013 at 17:45:59 UTC, Joakim wrote: I wouldn't call closing source that they legally allowed to be closed antisocial. I'd call their contradictory, angry response to what their license permits antisocial. :) Just because you're doing something legal doesn't mean you're not being antisocial. It's a pretty psychopathic attitude to conflate legality and morality, it's effectively saying "I have the moral right to do whatever I can get away with"
Re: DConf 2013 Closing Keynote: Quo Vadis by Andrei Alexandrescu
On 7/1/2013 2:04 PM, Brad Roberts wrote: On 7/1/13 11:42 AM, Walter Bright wrote: On 7/1/2013 10:45 AM, Joakim wrote: Then they should choose a mixed license like the Mozilla Public License or CDDL, which keeps OSS files open while allowing linking with closed source files within the same application. If they instead chose a license that allows closing all source, one can only assume they're okay with it. In any case, I could care less if they're okay with it or not, I was just surprised that they chose the BSD license and then were mad when someone was thinking about closing it up. I should point out that the Boost license was chosen for Phobos specifically because it allowed people to copy it and use it for whatever purpose, including making closed source versions, adapting them for use with Go :-), whatever. Actually, Boost was specifically chosen because it didn't require attribution when redistributing. If BSD hadn't had that clause we probably would be using it instead. That was indeed another important reason for it. But we were well aware of and approved of the idea that people could take it and make closed source versions.
Re: DConf 2013 Closing Keynote: Quo Vadis by Andrei Alexandrescu
On 7/1/13 11:42 AM, Walter Bright wrote: On 7/1/2013 10:45 AM, Joakim wrote: Then they should choose a mixed license like the Mozilla Public License or CDDL, which keeps OSS files open while allowing linking with closed source files within the same application. If they instead chose a license that allows closing all source, one can only assume they're okay with it. In any case, I could care less if they're okay with it or not, I was just surprised that they chose the BSD license and then were mad when someone was thinking about closing it up. I should point out that the Boost license was chosen for Phobos specifically because it allowed people to copy it and use it for whatever purpose, including making closed source versions, adapting them for use with Go :-), whatever. Actually, Boost was specifically chosen because it didn't require attribution when redistributing. If BSD hadn't had that clause we probably would be using it instead.
Re: DConf 2013 Closing Keynote: Quo Vadis by Andrei Alexandrescu
On 7/1/2013 10:45 AM, Joakim wrote: Then they should choose a mixed license like the Mozilla Public License or CDDL, which keeps OSS files open while allowing linking with closed source files within the same application. If they instead chose a license that allows closing all source, one can only assume they're okay with it. In any case, I could care less if they're okay with it or not, I was just surprised that they chose the BSD license and then were mad when someone was thinking about closing it up. I should point out that the Boost license was chosen for Phobos specifically because it allowed people to copy it and use it for whatever purpose, including making closed source versions, adapting them for use with Go :-), whatever. It would be pretty silly of us to complain about that after the fact. People who don't want closed source versions should use GPL licenses.
Re: DConf 2013 Closing Keynote: Quo Vadis by Andrei Alexandrescu
On Monday, 1 July 2013 at 10:15:34 UTC, Joseph Rushton Wakeling wrote: On Sunday, 30 June 2013 at 19:45:06 UTC, Joakim wrote: OK, glad to hear that you wouldn't be against it. You'd be surprised how many who use permissive licenses still go nuts when you propose to do exactly what the license allows, ie close up parts of the source. Because people don't just care about the strict legal constraints, but also about the social compact around software. Often people choose permissive licenses because they want to ensure other free software authors can use their software without encountering the licensing incompatibilities that can result from the various forms of copyleft. Closing up their software is rightly seen as an abuse of their goodwill. Then they should choose a mixed license like the Mozilla Public License or CDDL, which keeps OSS files open while allowing linking with closed source files within the same application. If they instead chose a license that allows closing all source, one can only assume they're okay with it. In any case, I could care less if they're okay with it or not, I was just surprised that they chose the BSD license and then were mad when someone was thinking about closing it up. In other cases there may be a broad community consensus that builds up around a piece of software, that this work should be shared and contributed to as a common good (e.g. X.org). Attempts to close it up violate those social norms and are rightly seen as an attack on that community and the valuable commons they have cultivated. There's no doubt that even if they chose a permissive license like the MIT or BSD license, these communities work primarily with OSS code and tend to prefer that code be open. I can understand if they then tend to rebuff attempts to keep source from them, purely as a social phenomenon, however irrational it may be. That's why I asked Walter if he had a similar opinion, but he didn't care. I still think it's ridiculous to put your code under an extremely permissive license and then get mad when people take you up on it, particularly since they never publicly broadcast that they want everything to be open. It is only after you talk to them that you realize that the BSD gang are often as much freetards as the GPL gang, just in their own special way. ;) Community anger against legal but antisocial behaviour is hardly limited to software, and is a fairly important mechanism for ensuring that people behave well towards one another. I wouldn't call closing source that they legally allowed to be closed antisocial. I'd call their contradictory, angry response to what their license permits antisocial. :) Since you have been so gracious to use such permissive licenses for almost all of D, I'm sure someone will try the closed/paid experiment someday and see if which of us is right. :) Good luck with that :-) By the way, you mentioned a project of your own where you employed the short-term open core model you describe. Want to tell us more about that? Regardless of differences of opinion, it's always good to hear about someone's particular experience with a project. I wrote up an article a couple years back talking about the new hybrid model I used, it's up on Phoronix and my project is mentioned there: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=sprewell_licensing Note that this article was written when Android had less than 10% of the almost billion users it has today, by using a similar hybrid model, and I was thinking up these ideas years before, long before I'd heard of Android. My project was a small one, so it couldn't be a resounding proof of my time-limited version of the hybrid model, but it worked for its purpose and I'm fairly certain it will be the dominant model someday. :)
Re: DConf 2013 Closing Keynote: Quo Vadis by Andrei Alexandrescu
On Sunday, 30 June 2013 at 19:45:06 UTC, Joakim wrote: OK, glad to hear that you wouldn't be against it. You'd be surprised how many who use permissive licenses still go nuts when you propose to do exactly what the license allows, ie close up parts of the source. Because people don't just care about the strict legal constraints, but also about the social compact around software. Often people choose permissive licenses because they want to ensure other free software authors can use their software without encountering the licensing incompatibilities that can result from the various forms of copyleft. Closing up their software is rightly seen as an abuse of their goodwill. In other cases there may be a broad community consensus that builds up around a piece of software, that this work should be shared and contributed to as a common good (e.g. X.org). Attempts to close it up violate those social norms and are rightly seen as an attack on that community and the valuable commons they have cultivated. Community anger against legal but antisocial behaviour is hardly limited to software, and is a fairly important mechanism for ensuring that people behave well towards one another. Since you have been so gracious to use such permissive licenses for almost all of D, I'm sure someone will try the closed/paid experiment someday and see if which of us is right. :) Good luck with that :-) By the way, you mentioned a project of your own where you employed the short-term open core model you describe. Want to tell us more about that? Regardless of differences of opinion, it's always good to hear about someone's particular experience with a project.
Re: DConf 2013 Closing Keynote: Quo Vadis by Andrei Alexandrescu
Well, it is in the sense that it _is_ a deficiency of built-in AAs for those who want to be able to use different implementations for different use cases, but it's not something that can actually be fixed, and having to use a library solution isn't exactly all that bad anyway, especially when most languages don't have AAs built-in in the first place. It's just a convenience feature. - Jonathan M Davis Thanks for the dicussion! I thankfully haven't run into problems with needed highly optimized assiociative arrays, but it's good to know what the limitations are and why.
Re: DConf 2013 Closing Keynote: Quo Vadis by Andrei Alexandrescu
On Sunday, June 30, 2013 22:45:04 Steven Schveighoffer wrote: > On Sun, 30 Jun 2013 22:02:11 -0400, Jonathan M Davis > > I know. My point was that that's an inherent problem with built-in AAs > > that > > can't be overcome (regardless of how well they're implemented). If you > > want > > that level of control, you _have_ to use a library solution. > > OK. I guess I was just reading your statement like it was a "problem" :) Well, it is in the sense that it _is_ a deficiency of built-in AAs for those who want to be able to use different implementations for different use cases, but it's not something that can actually be fixed, and having to use a library solution isn't exactly all that bad anyway, especially when most languages don't have AAs built-in in the first place. It's just a convenience feature. - Jonathan M Davis
Re: DConf 2013 Closing Keynote: Quo Vadis by Andrei Alexandrescu
On Sun, 30 Jun 2013 22:02:11 -0400, Jonathan M Davis wrote: On Sunday, June 30, 2013 21:54:08 Steven Schveighoffer wrote: On Sun, 30 Jun 2013 21:43:53 -0400, Jonathan M Davis wrote: > But I think that they key issue with swapping out > the implementation is not whether you can swap out the implementation > for your > whole program but rather being able to choose different implementations > for > different parts of your program. This would never happen. AAs are only ever going to be one implementation. If you want to use another map type, you will have to use a struct/class. I suppose AA's could simply be polymorphic, but I don't see the benefit. I know. My point was that that's an inherent problem with built-in AAs that can't be overcome (regardless of how well they're implemented). If you want that level of control, you _have_ to use a library solution. OK. I guess I was just reading your statement like it was a "problem" :) -Steve
Re: DConf 2013 Closing Keynote: Quo Vadis by Andrei Alexandrescu
On Sunday, June 30, 2013 21:59:45 Steven Schveighoffer wrote: > On Sun, 30 Jun 2013 21:43:53 -0400, Jonathan M Davis > > wrote: > > On Sunday, June 30, 2013 19:20:47 Steven Schveighoffer wrote: > >> No, the main issue is the current one is runtime-only, and so simple > >> function calls such as toHash and opCmp cannot be inlined. > > > > Yeah. That's a big problem. We really need to templatize all that - > > though the > > current implementation is enough of a mess to make that difficult. > > The current implementation suffers from two problems: > > 1. The compiler doesn't treat T[U] as a direct instantiation of > AssocArray!(T, U) in all cases. > 2. The compiler has bugs in terms of pure/@safe/ctfe/etc that it > "overlooks" when using built-in AAs. I think those who have tried to make > a complete library-replacement for AAs have found this out. > > The best path to resolution I think is: > > 1. make a complete replacement for AAs that can be instantiated and > operate without mapping to the AA syntax. It may not build, but it should > be written and bugs against the compiler filed. > 2. Fix all bugs to make 1. compile/possible > 3. Switch compiler to use type in 1. whenever AA's are used. > > I believe some have made a very good attempt to do 1 (H.S. Teoh I think? > maybe someone else) Yeah. He was working on it and seems to have pretty much decided that the job is too big for one man (and/or that he doesn't have enough time). I believe that there was a post on D.Learn a few months back where you pointed to where he had his changes thus far (so that others could look at it and potentially continue his work), but AFAIK, he's given up on the whole thing for now. - Jonathan M Davis
Re: DConf 2013 Closing Keynote: Quo Vadis by Andrei Alexandrescu
On Sunday, June 30, 2013 21:54:08 Steven Schveighoffer wrote: > On Sun, 30 Jun 2013 21:43:53 -0400, Jonathan M Davis > > wrote: > > But I think that they key issue with swapping out > > the implementation is not whether you can swap out the implementation > > for your > > whole program but rather being able to choose different implementations > > for > > different parts of your program. > > This would never happen. AAs are only ever going to be one > implementation. If you want to use another map type, you will have to use > a struct/class. I suppose AA's could simply be polymorphic, but I don't > see the benefit. I know. My point was that that's an inherent problem with built-in AAs that can't be overcome (regardless of how well they're implemented). If you want that level of control, you _have_ to use a library solution. - Jonathan M Davis
Re: DConf 2013 Closing Keynote: Quo Vadis by Andrei Alexandrescu
On Sun, 30 Jun 2013 21:43:53 -0400, Jonathan M Davis wrote: On Sunday, June 30, 2013 19:20:47 Steven Schveighoffer wrote: No, the main issue is the current one is runtime-only, and so simple function calls such as toHash and opCmp cannot be inlined. Yeah. That's a big problem. We really need to templatize all that - though the current implementation is enough of a mess to make that difficult. The current implementation suffers from two problems: 1. The compiler doesn't treat T[U] as a direct instantiation of AssocArray!(T, U) in all cases. 2. The compiler has bugs in terms of pure/@safe/ctfe/etc that it "overlooks" when using built-in AAs. I think those who have tried to make a complete library-replacement for AAs have found this out. The best path to resolution I think is: 1. make a complete replacement for AAs that can be instantiated and operate without mapping to the AA syntax. It may not build, but it should be written and bugs against the compiler filed. 2. Fix all bugs to make 1. compile/possible 3. Switch compiler to use type in 1. whenever AA's are used. I believe some have made a very good attempt to do 1 (H.S. Teoh I think? maybe someone else) -Steve
Re: DConf 2013 Closing Keynote: Quo Vadis by Andrei Alexandrescu
On Sun, 30 Jun 2013 21:43:53 -0400, Jonathan M Davis wrote: But I think that they key issue with swapping out the implementation is not whether you can swap out the implementation for your whole program but rather being able to choose different implementations for different parts of your program. This would never happen. AAs are only ever going to be one implementation. If you want to use another map type, you will have to use a struct/class. I suppose AA's could simply be polymorphic, but I don't see the benefit. -Steve
Re: DConf 2013 Closing Keynote: Quo Vadis by Andrei Alexandrescu
On Sunday, June 30, 2013 19:20:47 Steven Schveighoffer wrote: > On Sun, 30 Jun 2013 15:51:32 -0400, Jonathan M Davis > > wrote: > > On Sunday, June 30, 2013 21:05:41 CJS wrote: > >> In the talk Andrei seems to mentions that D's associative arrays > >> are lacking in performance somehow. I'm very new to D, but it's > >> not obvious to me what the shortcoming is. I assume it's that for > >> some reason it's hard to specialize associative arrays to specfic > >> types to give increased performance in specfic cases, but I'm > >> unclear why that would be difficult. Could someone please > >> elaborate? > > > > There's one implementation, and you can't swap it out, whereas different > > use > > cases may perform better with different implementations. On top of that, > > the > > current implementation is rather buggy and fragile, but that's an > > implementation issue rather than an inherent one. > > No, the main issue is the current one is runtime-only, and so simple > function calls such as toHash and opCmp cannot be inlined. Yeah. That's a big problem. We really need to templatize all that - though the current implementation is enough of a mess to make that difficult. > You absolutely can change implementations (Walter did a few years ago from > tree-based collision resolution to linked-list based). What you can't do > is switch to a fully generated AA, or change the compiler-expected API. Okay. I didn't know that. But I think that they key issue with swapping out the implementation is not whether you can swap out the implementation for your whole program but rather being able to choose different implementations for different parts of your program. If you really care about your containers enough to worry about optimizing them for your particular use cases, then unless you only have one use case within your program, there's a good chance that you're going to want different implementations for different parts of your program. With library containers, that's as simple as swapping which one you use. With the bulit-in stuff like AAs, you can't do that. You only get one (even if you can make it different across programs). Now, if you just use library types, you don't have that problem, so in the long run, folks who really want to optimize their containers will probably do that. And if they _really_ want to optimize their containers, they're probably writing them themselves anyway. Regardless, while having a built-in AA simplifies the common case, it _is_ more limiting, and if you really care about how your AAs function, you're going to have to use a library solution (even if the bult-in AAs have a solid implementation). - Jonathan M Davis
Re: DConf 2013 Closing Keynote: Quo Vadis by Andrei Alexandrescu
On Sun, 30 Jun 2013 15:51:32 -0400, Jonathan M Davis wrote: On Sunday, June 30, 2013 21:05:41 CJS wrote: In the talk Andrei seems to mentions that D's associative arrays are lacking in performance somehow. I'm very new to D, but it's not obvious to me what the shortcoming is. I assume it's that for some reason it's hard to specialize associative arrays to specfic types to give increased performance in specfic cases, but I'm unclear why that would be difficult. Could someone please elaborate? There's one implementation, and you can't swap it out, whereas different use cases may perform better with different implementations. On top of that, the current implementation is rather buggy and fragile, but that's an implementation issue rather than an inherent one. No, the main issue is the current one is runtime-only, and so simple function calls such as toHash and opCmp cannot be inlined. You absolutely can change implementations (Walter did a few years ago from tree-based collision resolution to linked-list based). What you can't do is switch to a fully generated AA, or change the compiler-expected API. -Steve
Re: DConf 2013 Closing Keynote: Quo Vadis by Andrei Alexandrescu
On Sunday, June 30, 2013 21:05:41 CJS wrote: > In the talk Andrei seems to mentions that D's associative arrays > are lacking in performance somehow. I'm very new to D, but it's > not obvious to me what the shortcoming is. I assume it's that for > some reason it's hard to specialize associative arrays to specfic > types to give increased performance in specfic cases, but I'm > unclear why that would be difficult. Could someone please > elaborate? There's one implementation, and you can't swap it out, whereas different use cases may perform better with different implementations. On top of that, the current implementation is rather buggy and fragile, but that's an implementation issue rather than an inherent one. - Jonathan M Davis
Re: DConf 2013 Closing Keynote: Quo Vadis by Andrei Alexandrescu
On Sunday, 30 June 2013 at 19:24:54 UTC, Walter Bright wrote: On 6/30/2013 2:50 AM, Joakim wrote: I wondered if you have any opinion on such code reuse, if someone takes your code and closes it, even if you wouldn't try to block it because you have already released it under a permissive license. No, I don't have an opinion on it, other than that I'd rather they didn't try to create an incompatible language and still call it "D". OK, glad to hear that you wouldn't be against it. You'd be surprised how many who use permissive licenses still go nuts when you propose to do exactly what the license allows, ie close up parts of the source. Since you have been so gracious to use such permissive licenses for almost all of D, I'm sure someone will try the closed/paid experiment someday and see if which of us is right. :)
Re: DConf 2013 Closing Keynote: Quo Vadis by Andrei Alexandrescu
On 6/30/2013 2:50 AM, Joakim wrote: I wondered if you have any opinion on such code reuse, if someone takes your code and closes it, even if you wouldn't try to block it because you have already released it under a permissive license. No, I don't have an opinion on it, other than that I'd rather they didn't try to create an incompatible language and still call it "D".
Re: DConf 2013 Closing Keynote: Quo Vadis by Andrei Alexandrescu
In the talk Andrei seems to mentions that D's associative arrays are lacking in performance somehow. I'm very new to D, but it's not obvious to me what the shortcoming is. I assume it's that for some reason it's hard to specialize associative arrays to specfic types to give increased performance in specfic cases, but I'm unclear why that would be difficult. Could someone please elaborate?
Re: DConf 2013 Closing Keynote: Quo Vadis by Andrei Alexandrescu
On Sunday, 30 June 2013 at 09:34:14 UTC, Walter Bright wrote: On 6/29/2013 11:39 PM, Joakim wrote: What do you think of my idea of segmenting the market though? Keep providing a free-as-in-beer dmd, like you are now, for the people who want it, while Remedy and others who want performance pay for a dmd that puts out more performant code, with those improvements slowly merged back into the free dmd over time. It won't work. Those days are gone. I disagree. We'll find out. If you are not interested in selling a paid compiler yourself, I've noted that there's nothing stopping someone else from doing this. They can take the dmd frontend under the Artistic license, compile it with the BSD-licensed llvm backend and boost-licensed druntime and phobos, and sell a paid compiler, without any permission from you or any other D contributors. You could not do anything legally to stop this, as the permissive OSS licenses allow it. However, as one of the main authors of this code, do you have any preference for or against someone taking your code to do this? Part of issuing it under a permissive license is I won't try to block someone from doing whatever they want to that is allowed by the license. I understand, but that wasn't exactly my question. I wondered if you have any opinion on such code reuse, if someone takes your code and closes it, even if you wouldn't try to block it because you have already released it under a permissive license. Some wouldn't try to close the source if you expressed a preference that it not be done- I have no such compunction, if the license allows closing source, but others might- just wondering if you have an opinion or preference on your source being closed up. Thanks for all the great work you have done on D and the dmd compiler. As much as I'd like to see a commercial implementation, it is amazing how much you have given away for free. :)
Re: DConf 2013 Closing Keynote: Quo Vadis by Andrei Alexandrescu
On 6/29/2013 11:39 PM, Joakim wrote: What do you think of my idea of segmenting the market though? Keep providing a free-as-in-beer dmd, like you are now, for the people who want it, while Remedy and others who want performance pay for a dmd that puts out more performant code, with those improvements slowly merged back into the free dmd over time. It won't work. Those days are gone. If you are not interested in selling a paid compiler yourself, I've noted that there's nothing stopping someone else from doing this. They can take the dmd frontend under the Artistic license, compile it with the BSD-licensed llvm backend and boost-licensed druntime and phobos, and sell a paid compiler, without any permission from you or any other D contributors. You could not do anything legally to stop this, as the permissive OSS licenses allow it. However, as one of the main authors of this code, do you have any preference for or against someone taking your code to do this? Part of issuing it under a permissive license is I won't try to block someone from doing whatever they want to that is allowed by the license.
Re: DConf 2013 Closing Keynote: Quo Vadis by Andrei Alexandrescu
I was wondering if Walter or Andrei would respond to this thread. On Saturday, 29 June 2013 at 08:37:48 UTC, Walter Bright wrote: I agree with your post, I just want to make a couple of minor corrections. What exactly do you agree with Luca about, considering all your "minor corrections" basically demolish all his points? ;) Your C++ history was really interesting, as I first used it in '97, right when it was peaking. ZTC++ was cheap as dirt, and at the time people didn't mind paying for compilers. Those days are over, though. People have different expectations today. There's no doubt that developers have been spoiled by all the free and shareware tools out there these days. What do you think of my idea of segmenting the market though? Keep providing a free-as-in-beer dmd, like you are now, for the people who want it, while Remedy and others who want performance pay for a dmd that puts out more performant code, with those improvements slowly merged back into the free dmd over time. If you are not interested in selling a paid compiler yourself, I've noted that there's nothing stopping someone else from doing this. They can take the dmd frontend under the Artistic license, compile it with the BSD-licensed llvm backend and boost-licensed druntime and phobos, and sell a paid compiler, without any permission from you or any other D contributors. You could not do anything legally to stop this, as the permissive OSS licenses allow it. However, as one of the main authors of this code, do you have any preference for or against someone taking your code to do this?
Re: DConf 2013 Closing Keynote: Quo Vadis by Andrei Alexandrescu
On 6/29/2013 7:56 PM, CJS wrote: Wow. That's interesting reading. Thanks for the history lesson! There are other versions of this history, none of which mention the role ZTC++ played in C++ attaining critical mass, so I like to repeat my version now and then :-)
Re: DConf 2013 Closing Keynote: Quo Vadis by Andrei Alexandrescu
On 6/29/2013 9:10 AM, Leandro Lucarella wrote: Even when extremely interesting, I think the ZTC++ history before open source existed or was really viable (the free software movement started in 1983, the FSF was founded in 1985 and the open source definition was made in 1998) is irrelevant in terms to analyze if right now it would be valuable to make the reference compiler partly closed. Yes, I agree. Things are fundamentally different now.
Re: DConf 2013 Closing Keynote: Quo Vadis by Andrei Alexandrescu
On 6/29/2013 5:08 AM, Joseph Rushton Wakeling wrote: On Saturday, 29 June 2013 at 08:37:48 UTC, Walter Bright wrote: The bottom line was the open source movement was not a very significant force in the 1980's when C++ gained traction. Open source really exploded around 2000, along with the internet. I wonder if open source perhaps needed the internet in order to be viable. That's a very good point. It's before my time really, but if I understand the history right, the main way to get hold of copies of stuff like GCC in the early days was to pay for a set of disks with it on -- and there was no infrastructure for easily sharing changes. So neither the free-as-in-beer or free-as-in-freedom advantages were as readily apparent or effective as they are today. True, distribution was mainly by physical mail. There was some via BBS's and Usenet, but these were severely limited by bandwidth. I'd receive bug reports by fax, paper listings, and mailed floppies.
Re: DConf 2013 Closing Keynote: Quo Vadis by Andrei Alexandrescu
On Saturday, 29 June 2013 at 08:37:48 UTC, Walter Bright wrote: I agree with your post, I just want to make a couple of minor corrections. On 6/27/2013 4:58 AM, Leandro Lucarella wrote: Do you really think C++ took off because there are commercial implementations? I got into the C++ fray in the 1987-88 time frame. At the time, there was a great debate between C++ and Objective-C, and they were running neck-and-neck. I was casting about looking for a way to get a competitive edge with my C compiler, and investigated. Objective-C was put out by Stepstone. They wanted royalties from anyone who implemented a clone, and kept a tight fist over the licensing. C++ only existed in its AT&T cfront implementation. I wrote a letter to AT&T's lawyers, asking if I could create a C++ clone, and they phoned me up and were very nice. They said sure, and I wouldn't have to pay any license or royalties. So I went with C++. I don't really know if cfront was open source at the time or not, but I never looked at its source. I think cfront source came with a paid license for unix, but I'm not positive. Anyhow, I wound up implementing the first native C++ compiler for the PC. Directly afterward, C++ took off like a rocket. Was it because of Zortech C++? I think there's strong evidence it was. A lot of programmers turned up their noses at the peasants programming on DOS, but that's where the action was in the 1980's, and ZTC++ had no realistic competitors. You could also see the results in Usenet. Postings about C++ and O-C were neck-and-neck until ZTC++ came out, and then things tilted heavily in C++'s favor, and O-C disappeared into oblivion (later to be resurrected by Steve Jobs, but that's another tale). ZTC++ was so successful that Borland and Microsoft (according to rumor) abandoned their efforts at making a proprietary OOP C, and went with C++. ZTC++ was closed source, as were Borland's Turbo C++ and Microsoft C++. Do you think being a standardized language didn't help? C++ wasn't standardized until 1998, 10 years later. The 90's were pretty much the heyday of C++. Do you think the fact that there was a free implementation around that it supported virtually any existing platform didn't help? Do you think the fact was it was (almost) compatible with C (which was born freeish, since back then software was freely shared between universities) didn't help? ZTC++ was cheap as dirt, and at the time people didn't mind paying for compilers. Those days are over, though. People have different expectations today. No. A standard is something that was standardized by a standard committee which, ideally, have some credits to do so. C++ is standardized by ISO. I guess Walter and Andrei can give you more details, since I think they both were involved in the standardization of C++. I've attended a few ISO C++ meetings, but I never became a voting member, and have had pretty much zero influence over the direction C++ took after the 1980's. The bottom line was the open source movement was not a very significant force in the 1980's when C++ gained traction. Open source really exploded around 2000, along with the internet. I wonder if open source perhaps needed the internet in order to be viable. Wow. That's interesting reading. Thanks for the history lesson!
Re: DConf 2013 Closing Keynote: Quo Vadis by Andrei Alexandrescu
Walter Bright, el 29 de June a las 01:37 me escribiste: > The bottom line was the open source movement was not a very > significant force in the 1980's when C++ gained traction. Open > source really exploded around 2000, along with the internet. I > wonder if open source perhaps needed the internet in order to be > viable. Yes, I think that's the whole point, without Internet open source was extremely niche, without resources to distribute it, it was almost impossible to take off, and almost impossible to collaborate, which is the big different open source have vs traditional commercial software. Even when extremely interesting, I think the ZTC++ history before open source existed or was really viable (the free software movement started in 1983, the FSF was founded in 1985 and the open source definition was made in 1998) is irrelevant in terms to analyze if right now it would be valuable to make the reference compiler partly closed. -- Leandro Lucarella (AKA luca) http://llucax.com.ar/ -- GPG Key: 5F5A8D05 (F8CD F9A7 BF00 5431 4145 104C 949E BFB6 5F5A 8D05) -- EL PRIMER MONITO DEL MILENIO... -- Crónica TV
Re: DConf 2013 Closing Keynote: Quo Vadis by Andrei Alexandrescu
On Saturday, 29 June 2013 at 08:37:48 UTC, Walter Bright wrote: The bottom line was the open source movement was not a very significant force in the 1980's when C++ gained traction. Open source really exploded around 2000, along with the internet. I wonder if open source perhaps needed the internet in order to be viable. That's a very good point. It's before my time really, but if I understand the history right, the main way to get hold of copies of stuff like GCC in the early days was to pay for a set of disks with it on -- and there was no infrastructure for easily sharing changes. So neither the free-as-in-beer or free-as-in-freedom advantages were as readily apparent or effective as they are today.
Re: DConf 2013 Closing Keynote: Quo Vadis by Andrei Alexandrescu
I agree with your post, I just want to make a couple of minor corrections. On 6/27/2013 4:58 AM, Leandro Lucarella wrote: Do you really think C++ took off because there are commercial implementations? I got into the C++ fray in the 1987-88 time frame. At the time, there was a great debate between C++ and Objective-C, and they were running neck-and-neck. I was casting about looking for a way to get a competitive edge with my C compiler, and investigated. Objective-C was put out by Stepstone. They wanted royalties from anyone who implemented a clone, and kept a tight fist over the licensing. C++ only existed in its AT&T cfront implementation. I wrote a letter to AT&T's lawyers, asking if I could create a C++ clone, and they phoned me up and were very nice. They said sure, and I wouldn't have to pay any license or royalties. So I went with C++. I don't really know if cfront was open source at the time or not, but I never looked at its source. I think cfront source came with a paid license for unix, but I'm not positive. Anyhow, I wound up implementing the first native C++ compiler for the PC. Directly afterward, C++ took off like a rocket. Was it because of Zortech C++? I think there's strong evidence it was. A lot of programmers turned up their noses at the peasants programming on DOS, but that's where the action was in the 1980's, and ZTC++ had no realistic competitors. You could also see the results in Usenet. Postings about C++ and O-C were neck-and-neck until ZTC++ came out, and then things tilted heavily in C++'s favor, and O-C disappeared into oblivion (later to be resurrected by Steve Jobs, but that's another tale). ZTC++ was so successful that Borland and Microsoft (according to rumor) abandoned their efforts at making a proprietary OOP C, and went with C++. ZTC++ was closed source, as were Borland's Turbo C++ and Microsoft C++. Do you think being a standardized language didn't help? C++ wasn't standardized until 1998, 10 years later. The 90's were pretty much the heyday of C++. Do you think the fact that there was a free implementation around that it supported virtually any existing platform didn't help? Do you think the fact was it was (almost) compatible with C (which was born freeish, since back then software was freely shared between universities) didn't help? ZTC++ was cheap as dirt, and at the time people didn't mind paying for compilers. Those days are over, though. People have different expectations today. No. A standard is something that was standardized by a standard committee which, ideally, have some credits to do so. C++ is standardized by ISO. I guess Walter and Andrei can give you more details, since I think they both were involved in the standardization of C++. I've attended a few ISO C++ meetings, but I never became a voting member, and have had pretty much zero influence over the direction C++ took after the 1980's. The bottom line was the open source movement was not a very significant force in the 1980's when C++ gained traction. Open source really exploded around 2000, along with the internet. I wonder if open source perhaps needed the internet in order to be viable.
Re: DConf 2013 Closing Keynote: Quo Vadis by Andrei Alexandrescu
On 27 June 2013 14:17, Joakim wrote: > As I said earlier, I'm done with this debate. > > There is no point talking to people who make blatantly ignorant statements > like, "Binary blobs are the exception rather than the rule in Linux, and > many hardware vendors would flat out say 'no' to doing any support on them." > This assertion is so ignorant of the facts, it's laughable. :) Fact: That quote you find laughable isn't my opinion. It was what Linus said during a Q&A after one of his talks (at least, if I remember it correctly ;). > I have no idea what to make of Iain's talking about gdc or that it is a > "one-man team" > in response to my prediction that ldc could go closed/paid and obsolete dmd: > there is absolutely no connection between the topics. > I suppose that was my ignorance there, I assumed that you at least *knew* a little bit of history behind the development of D1/D2. I'm sure people would raise their eyebrows and sigh to have the age old question "why don't we just drop development of DMD and move it to X?" asked again. :o) -- Iain Buclaw *(p < e ? p++ : p) = (c & 0x0f) + '0';
Re: DConf 2013 Closing Keynote: Quo Vadis by Andrei Alexandrescu
Joakim, el 27 de June a las 15:17 me escribiste: > As I said earlier, I'm done with this debate. > > There is no point talking to people who make blatantly ignorant > statements like, "Binary blobs are the exception rather than the > rule in Linux, and many hardware vendors would flat out say 'no' to > doing any support on them." This assertion is so ignorant of the > facts, it's laughable. :) I have no idea what to make of Iain's > talking about gdc or that it is a "one-man team" in response to my > prediction that ldc could go closed/paid and obsolete dmd: there is > absolutely no connection between the topics. > > As for Luca's long response, it is filled with basic mistakes, silly > and incorrect rehashes of material already covered, or trivial How convenient is to put a lot of adjectives together and not a single fact to say someone is wrong. Almost as convenient as calling people religious zaelots when you run out of arguments. :) And is so funny that you keep talking about the D contributors not participating in the thread when evidently you don't know who the contributors are. I'm just so glad that you are done with this debate... My eyes were hurting from reading so much crap. Bye, bye! Have fun with Visual C++! -- Leandro Lucarella (AKA luca) http://llucax.com.ar/ -- GPG Key: 5F5A8D05 (F8CD F9A7 BF00 5431 4145 104C 949E BFB6 5F5A 8D05) -- Did you know the originally a Danish guy invented the burglar-alarm unfortunately, it got stolen
Re: DConf 2013 Closing Keynote: Quo Vadis by Andrei Alexandrescu
On 27 June 2013 14:40, Joakim wrote: > On Thursday, 27 June 2013 at 13:25:06 UTC, John Colvin wrote: >> >> On Thursday, 27 June 2013 at 13:18:01 UTC, Joakim wrote: >>> >>> Look, I get it, you guys are religious zealots- you tip your hand when >>> you allude to ethical or moral reasons for using open source, a crazy idea >>> if there ever was one- and you will come up with all kinds of silly >>> arguments in the face of overwhelming evidence that _pure_ open source has >>> failed. >> >> >> Most replies to you have been quite measured and reasonable. I'm not sure >> what justifies you calling people zealots. > > Read the rest of the sentence which you quoted, my reasons are stated. When > I come across so many arguments that are _factually_ wrong- "the Artistic > license doesn't allow closing source," "most linux installs don't use binary > blobs"- I know I'm dealing with religious zealots. Which is quite amusing, as those quotes aren't found anywhere in this thread. :o) -- Iain Buclaw *(p < e ? p++ : p) = (c & 0x0f) + '0';
Re: DConf 2013 Closing Keynote: Quo Vadis by Andrei Alexandrescu
On Thursday, 27 June 2013 at 13:25:06 UTC, John Colvin wrote: On Thursday, 27 June 2013 at 13:18:01 UTC, Joakim wrote: Look, I get it, you guys are religious zealots- you tip your hand when you allude to ethical or moral reasons for using open source, a crazy idea if there ever was one- and you will come up with all kinds of silly arguments in the face of overwhelming evidence that _pure_ open source has failed. Most replies to you have been quite measured and reasonable. I'm not sure what justifies you calling people zealots. Read the rest of the sentence which you quoted, my reasons are stated. When I come across so many arguments that are _factually_ wrong- "the Artistic license doesn't allow closing source," "most linux installs don't use binary blobs"- I know I'm dealing with religious zealots.
Re: DConf 2013 Closing Keynote: Quo Vadis by Andrei Alexandrescu
On Thursday, 27 June 2013 at 13:18:01 UTC, Joakim wrote: There is no point talking to people who make blatantly ignorant statements Yeah, I keep wondering why someone even bothered to waste time explaining all this to someone who is incapable of both providing own reasoning and studying opponent one. I hope that anyone that has followed D history is perfectly aware of numbers that prove how beneficial transition to a community-based open development was.
Re: DConf 2013 Closing Keynote: Quo Vadis by Andrei Alexandrescu
On Thursday, 27 June 2013 at 13:18:01 UTC, Joakim wrote: As I said earlier, I'm done with this debate. There is no point talking to people who make blatantly ignorant statements like, "Binary blobs are the exception rather than the rule in Linux, and many hardware vendors would flat out say 'no' to doing any support on them." This assertion is so ignorant of the facts, it's laughable. :) I have no idea what to make of Iain's talking about gdc or that it is a "one-man team" in response to my prediction that ldc could go closed/paid and obsolete dmd: there is absolutely no connection between the topics. As for Luca's long response, it is filled with basic mistakes, silly and incorrect rehashes of material already covered, or trivial twits, like the fact that D has a spec but isn't standardized by any international body. For example, I originally pointed out several examples of other projects with existing commercial models and I was told that they're not "closed." I responded that I never said that they were all closed, only commercial, and I'm now told that since my proposed model for D is closed, I'm "misstating" myself. (Slaps head) These responses seem written by people who have a very tenuous grasp on the text I wrote. Look, I get it, you guys are religious zealots- you tip your hand when you allude to ethical or moral reasons for using open source, a crazy idea if there ever was one- and you will come up with all kinds of silly arguments in the face of overwhelming evidence that _pure_ open source has failed. Instead, you claim success when hybrid models bring more open source into the world, then nonsensically reverse course and claim that either they aren't actually hybrid or that such hybrid models are not really "open source," that it's a lie to call it that. (Slaps head again) I'm not trying to convince you zealots. You want to keep banging your heads against the wall for the greater glory of your religion, have fun with that. I'm simply putting forward a case for D going the route of the most successful projects these days, by using a hybrid model, with a unique variation that I came up with :) and have successfully used for a project of my own. Those who aren't religious about _pure_ open source can consider what I've proposed and my evidence and see if it makes sense to them. Most replies to you have been quite measured and reasonable. I'm not sure what justifies you calling people zealots.
Re: DConf 2013 Closing Keynote: Quo Vadis by Andrei Alexandrescu
As I said earlier, I'm done with this debate. There is no point talking to people who make blatantly ignorant statements like, "Binary blobs are the exception rather than the rule in Linux, and many hardware vendors would flat out say 'no' to doing any support on them." This assertion is so ignorant of the facts, it's laughable. :) I have no idea what to make of Iain's talking about gdc or that it is a "one-man team" in response to my prediction that ldc could go closed/paid and obsolete dmd: there is absolutely no connection between the topics. As for Luca's long response, it is filled with basic mistakes, silly and incorrect rehashes of material already covered, or trivial twits, like the fact that D has a spec but isn't standardized by any international body. For example, I originally pointed out several examples of other projects with existing commercial models and I was told that they're not "closed." I responded that I never said that they were all closed, only commercial, and I'm now told that since my proposed model for D is closed, I'm "misstating" myself. (Slaps head) These responses seem written by people who have a very tenuous grasp on the text I wrote. Look, I get it, you guys are religious zealots- you tip your hand when you allude to ethical or moral reasons for using open source, a crazy idea if there ever was one- and you will come up with all kinds of silly arguments in the face of overwhelming evidence that _pure_ open source has failed. Instead, you claim success when hybrid models bring more open source into the world, then nonsensically reverse course and claim that either they aren't actually hybrid or that such hybrid models are not really "open source," that it's a lie to call it that. (Slaps head again) I'm not trying to convince you zealots. You want to keep banging your heads against the wall for the greater glory of your religion, have fun with that. I'm simply putting forward a case for D going the route of the most successful projects these days, by using a hybrid model, with a unique variation that I came up with :) and have successfully used for a project of my own. Those who aren't religious about _pure_ open source can consider what I've proposed and my evidence and see if it makes sense to them.
Re: DConf 2013 Closing Keynote: Quo Vadis by Andrei Alexandrescu
On Thursday, 27 June 2013 at 08:21:12 UTC, Joakim wrote: I'm familiar with its arguments from a summary, not particularly interested in reading the whole thing. You know, I think I see what your problem is ... :-)
Re: DConf 2013 Closing Keynote: Quo Vadis by Andrei Alexandrescu
Joakim, el 26 de June a las 17:52 me escribiste: > On Wednesday, 26 June 2013 at 11:08:17 UTC, Leandro Lucarella wrote: > >Joakim, el 25 de June a las 23:37 me escribiste: > >>I don't know the views of the key contributors, but I wonder if > >>they > >>would have such a knee-jerk reaction against any paid/closed > >>work. > > > >Against being paid no, against being closed YES. Please don't even > >think > >about it. It was a hell of a ride trying to make D more open to > >step back now. > I suggest you read my original post more carefully. I have not > suggested closing up the entire D toolchain, as you seem to imply. Well, I'm not. I'm sticking with what you said. > I have suggested working on optimization patches in a closed-source > manner and providing two versions of the D compiler: one that is > faster, closed, and paid, with these optimization patches, another > that is slower, open, and free, without the optimization patches. I know, and that's what my e-mail was all about. I don't know why you got another impression. I even end the e-mail saying is a very bad business model too to just offer a paid better optimizer. > >What we need is companies paying to people to improve the > >compiler and toolchain. This is slowly starting to happen, in > >Sociomantic we are already 2 people dedicating some time to > >improve D as > >part of our job (Don and me). > Thanks for the work that you and Don have done with Sociomantic. > Why do you think more companies don't do this? My point is that if Because D is a new language and isn't as polished as other programming languages. I think Sociomantic was a bit crazy to adopt it so early really (my personal opinion). But it worked well (we had to do quite a lot extra efforts but I guess the time it saves in the daily usage paid for it). > there were money coming in from a paid compiler, Walter could fund > even more such work. Well, I think with a paid compiler you remove one of the main reasons why early adopters can be tempted to use D, because is free. What I'm sure is Sociomantic wouldn't pick D if they had to paid at that time, because it was a statup and startup usually don't have much money at first. > >We need more of this, and to get this, we need companies to start > >using D, and to get this, we need professionalism (I agree 100% with > >Andrei on this one). Is a bootstrap effort, and is not like > >volunteers need more time to be professional, is just that you have > >to want to make the jump. > I think this ignores the decades-long history we have with open > source software by now. It is not merely "wanting to make the > jump," most volunteers simply do not want to do painful tasks like > writing documentation or cannot put as much time into development > when no money is coming in. Simply saying "We have to try harder to > be professional" seems naive to me. Well, I guess we have very different views about the decades-long history of open source software, because I know tons of examples of applications being free, without "commercial implementations" or "paid modules" and very few with a more commercial model. Even more, the few examples I know of "paid modules" are quite recent, not decades-old. > >I think is way better to do less stuff but with higher quality, > >nobody is asking people for more time, is just changing the focus > >a bit, at least for some time. Again, this is only bootstrapping, and > >is always hard and painful. We need to make the jump to make > >companies comfortable using D, then things will start rolling by > >themselves. > If I understand your story right, the volunteers need to put a lot > of effort into "bootstrapping" the project to be more professional, > companies will see this and jump in, then they fund development from > then on out? It's possible, but is there any example you have in > mind? The languages that go this completely FOSS route tend not to > have as much adoption as those with closed implementations, like > C++. Are you kidding me? Python, Ruby, PHP, Perl. Do I have to say more than that? Do you really think C++ took off because there are commercial implementations? Do you think being a standardized language didn't help? Do you think the fact that there was a free implementation around that it supported virtually any existing platform didn't help? Do you think the fact was it was (almost) compatible with C (which was born freeish, since back then software was freely shared between universities) didn't help? > >First of all, your examples are completely wrong. The projects you > >are mentioning are 100% free, with no closed components (except for > >components done by third-party). > You are misstating what I said: I said "commercial," not "closed," You said close. Not just in the previous e-mail, but you just repeated it in this one: > I have suggested working on optimization patches in a CLOSED-SOURCE > manner and providing two versions of the D compiler: one that is > faster, CLOSED,
Re: DConf 2013 Closing Keynote: Quo Vadis by Andrei Alexandrescu
On 27 June 2013 09:53, Joakim wrote: > those involved with the D compiler can decide if this would be a worthwhile > direction. From their silence so far, I can only assume that they are not > interested in rousing the ire of the freetards and will simply maintain the > status quo of keeping all source public. > True, I tend to just ignore comments from opportunists who jump in and shout "Hey guys! I'm new around here, have you guys tried to do something completely radical on the off chance that it will work? I have a good feeling about this..!!" But as it stands, I'm taking a quick break from my usual GDC work before I reach stage 12 of burnout. ;) > This will lead to D's growth being slowed, compared to the alternative of > providing a paid compiler also. That's their choice to make. > In your opinion. > If somebody stumbles across this thread later, perhaps they will close up > optimization patches to ldc and sell a paid version. Given that those > behind dmd have not expressed any interest in a paid version, maybe these > ldc vendors will not involve them with the money or feature decisions of > their paid ldc. It would be likely that this paid compiler becomes the > dominant one and the original dmd project is forgotten. > This was said when GDC got the D2 language stable. The reality? I wouldn't hold my breath... I'm still a one-man team, and there is no contingency in place should something happen to me. -- Iain Buclaw *(p < e ? p++ : p) = (c & 0x0f) + '0';
Re: DConf 2013 Closing Keynote: Quo Vadis by Andrei Alexandrescu
On 27 June 2013 09:21, Joakim wrote: > But lets assume that you are right and the optimization patches I'm talking > about would tend to end up only in the backend. In that case, the frontend > would not have any closed patches and the paid version of dmd would simply > have a slightly-closed, more-optimized backend. There go all of Joseph's > previous arguments about the paid version not making the same OSS frontend > available to the free reference compiler or ldc and gdc. > > You are making my case for me. :) > Now you are just re-hashing what my initial thoughts were... ;) >>> Never read it but I have corresponded with the author, and I found him to >> >> be as religious about pure open source as Stallman is about the GPL. I >> suggest you try examining why D is still such a niche language even with >> "ten fold" growth. If you're not sure why, I suggest you look at the >> examples and reasons I've given, as to why closed source and hybrid models >> do much better. >>> >>> >> >> Then you should read it, as the 'cathedral' in question was GCC - a >> project >> started by Stallman. :) > > I'm familiar with its arguments from a summary, not particularly interested > in reading the whole thing. Insofar as he made the case for various > benefits of open source, some of the arguments I've heard make sense and I > have no problem with it. Insofar as he and others believe that it is an > argument for _pure_ open source or that _all_ source will eventually be > open, I think history has shown that argument to be dead wrong along with > the reasons why. > > It boils down to the facts that there is nowhere near as much money in pure > OSS models and volunteers cannot possibly provide all the materials > necessary for a full product, both of which I've mentioned before. This is > why hybrid models are now taking off, blending the benefits of open and > closed source. > But it's not blending the benefits at all. Open-core, however you try to sway or pitch it, does not qualify as open source. It is closed source. It is the opposite of open source. Personally, it is not acceptable that you market yourself as an open source product when in fact your business model is to sell closed source. This is confusing, I'd say it is border line lying. Well, marketing often is lying, but in the open source community we call out such lies, however subtle. Most open core vendors still market themselves as open source leaders, then come to you to sell closed source software. (They deserve to be critizised if you ask me). >>> Not sure what point you are trying to make, as both gdc and dmd are open >> >> source. I'm suggesting closing such patches, for a limited time. >>> >>> >> >> Closing patches benefit no one. And more to the point, you can't say >> that >> two compiler's implement the same language if both have different language >> features. > > The closed patches benefit those making money from the paid compiler and > since the free compiler would get these patches after a time limit, they > eventually benefit the community also. As for your purist approach to > compiler implementation, by that rationale, no two C++ compilers and all the > D compilers do not implement the "same language," since there are always > differences in the features supported by the different compilers. > > I'd say that some differentiation between compilers is normal and necessary. > This is were C/C++ went horribly wrong. Different compilers having a vagary of macros to identify the same platform or architecture, the question of what is valid syntax being different between compilers, code written in a certain way working in one compiler but throws an error with another... We are striving to be better than that from the start. > Also, many of the hybrid projects have pulled in previously purely-open, > purely community projects like KHTML/WebKit or mostly-open projects like the > linux kernel. The linux kernel repo evolved over time to include many > binary blobs and effectively become a hybrid model. > Binary blobs are the exception rather than the rule in Linux, and many hardware vendors would flat out say 'no' to doing any support on them. Moreover, the position of the Linux Foundation is that any closed-source kernel module is harmful and undesirable, and they are always urging for vendors to adopt a policy of supporting their customers on Linux with open-source kernel code. Which goes to show how useful a hybrid model has been for them... > And not all hybrid companies are that large: MySQL before it got bought out > was pulling in hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue using an "open > core" model but certainly wasn't in the super-sized class of Google or > Oracle. There are a handful of small companies that provided closed, > optimized versions of the PostgreSQL database (since most of the underlying > code is open source, it can be considered a hybrid model). > MySQL iirc was the first to practice this model.
Re: DConf 2013 Closing Keynote: Quo Vadis by Andrei Alexandrescu
On Thursday, 27 June 2013 at 03:20:37 UTC, Mathias Lang wrote: I've read (almost), everything, so I hope I won't miss a point here: a) I've heard about MSVC, Red Hat, Qt, Linux and so on. From my understanding, none of the projects mentionned have gone from free (as in free beer) to hybrid/closed. And I'm not currently able to think of one successful, widespread project that did. Then you are not paying attention. As I've already noted several times, Visual Studio, which is the way most use MSVC, has both paid and free versions. Red Hat contains binary blobs and possibly other non-OSS software and charges companies for consulting and support. Qt is an "open core" project that is dual-licensed under both OSS and commercial licenses, the latter of which you pay for. Linux contains binary blobs in the vast majority of installs and most people running it paid for it. If your implied point is that the original authors aren't the ones taking the project hybrid or paid, it depends on the license. Sometimes it is those owning the original copyright, as it had to be in the Qt, MySQL, and other dual-licensing cases, other times it isn't. b) Thinking that being free (as a beer and/or as freedom), hybrid, closed source of whatever is a single critera of success seems foolish. I'm not asking for a complete comparison (I think my mailbox won't stand it ;-) ), but please stop comparing a free operating software with a paid compiler, and assume the former have more users than the later because it's free (and vice-versa). In addition, I don't see the logic behind comparing something born in the 90s with something from the 2000s. Remember the Dot-com bubble ? Obviously nothing is a "single criteria of success," as has been stated already. In complex social fields like business or technology ventures, where there are many confounding factors, judgement and interpretation are everything. By your rationale, we might as well do _anything_ because how could we possibly know that C++ wasn't immensely successful only because Bjarne Stroustrup is a Dane? Obviously none of this discussion matters, as D has very little Danish involvement and therefore can never be as popular. ;) You have to have the insight to be able to weigh all these competing factors and while I agree that most cannot, those who are successful do. d) People pay for something they need. They don't adopt something because they can pay for it. That's why paid compiler must follow language promotion, not the other way around. These assertions are somewhat meaningless. Those who value performance will pay for the optimized version of the dmd compiler that I've proposed. Those who don't will use the slower, pure-OSS version. There is no reason for a paid compiler to only follow promotion, both must be done at the same time. In any case, I've lost interest in this debate. I've made my case, those involved with the D compiler can decide if this would be a worthwhile direction. From their silence so far, I can only assume that they are not interested in rousing the ire of the freetards and will simply maintain the status quo of keeping all source public. This will lead to D's growth being slowed, compared to the alternative of providing a paid compiler also. That's their choice to make. If somebody stumbles across this thread later, perhaps they will close up optimization patches to ldc and sell a paid version. Given that those behind dmd have not expressed any interest in a paid version, maybe these ldc vendors will not involve them with the money or feature decisions of their paid ldc. It would be likely that this paid compiler becomes the dominant one and the original dmd project is forgotten. If you don't choose the best approach, a hybrid model, you leave it open for somebody else to do it and take the project in a different direction.
Re: DConf 2013 Closing Keynote: Quo Vadis by Andrei Alexandrescu
On Wednesday, 26 June 2013 at 21:15:34 UTC, Iain Buclaw wrote: On Jun 26, 2013 9:00 PM, "Joakim" wrote: This is flat wrong. I suggest you read the Artistic license, it was chosen for a reason, ie it allows closing of source as long as you provide the original, unmodified binaries with any modified binaries. I suspect optimization fixes will be in both the frontend and backend. Code generation is in the back end, so the answer to that is simply 'no'. From what I understand about the kinds of optimizations that Walter was talking about, at least some of them would require work on the frontend also. But lets assume that you are right and the optimization patches I'm talking about would tend to end up only in the backend. In that case, the frontend would not have any closed patches and the paid version of dmd would simply have a slightly-closed, more-optimized backend. There go all of Joseph's previous arguments about the paid version not making the same OSS frontend available to the free reference compiler or ldc and gdc. You are making my case for me. :) Never read it but I have corresponded with the author, and I found him to be as religious about pure open source as Stallman is about the GPL. I suggest you try examining why D is still such a niche language even with "ten fold" growth. If you're not sure why, I suggest you look at the examples and reasons I've given, as to why closed source and hybrid models do much better. Then you should read it, as the 'cathedral' in question was GCC - a project started by Stallman. :) I'm familiar with its arguments from a summary, not particularly interested in reading the whole thing. Insofar as he made the case for various benefits of open source, some of the arguments I've heard make sense and I have no problem with it. Insofar as he and others believe that it is an argument for _pure_ open source or that _all_ source will eventually be open, I think history has shown that argument to be dead wrong along with the reasons why. It boils down to the facts that there is nowhere near as much money in pure OSS models and volunteers cannot possibly provide all the materials necessary for a full product, both of which I've mentioned before. This is why hybrid models are now taking off, blending the benefits of open and closed source. Not sure what point you are trying to make, as both gdc and dmd are open source. I'm suggesting closing such patches, for a limited time. Closing patches benefit no one. And more to the point, you can't say that two compiler's implement the same language if both have different language features. The closed patches benefit those making money from the paid compiler and since the free compiler would get these patches after a time limit, they eventually benefit the community also. As for your purist approach to compiler implementation, by that rationale, no two C++ compilers and all the D compilers do not implement the "same language," since there are always differences in the features supported by the different compilers. I'd say that some differentiation between compilers is normal and necessary. I see no reason why another "upcoming" project like D couldn't do the same. :) You seem to be confusing D for an Operating System, Smartphone, or any general consumer product. You seem to be confusing the dmd compiler to not be a piece of software, just like the rest, or the many proprietary C++ compilers out there. You seem to think when I say D I'm referring to dmd, or any other D compiler out there. I referred to the D project and have been talking about the compiler all along. The fact that you decided to make a meaningless statement, presumably about how D is a spec and therefore cannot be compared with Android, is irrelevant and frankly laughable. :) - The language implementation is open source. This allows anyone to take the current front-end code - or even write their own clean-room implementation from ground-up - and integrate it to their own backend X. Sort of. The dmd frontend is open source, but the backend is not under an open source license. Someone can swap out the backend and go completely closed, for example, using ldc (ldc used to have one or two GPL files, those would obviously have to be removed). The backend is not part of the D language implementation / specification. (for starters, it's not documented anywhere except as code). Of course the backend is part of the language implementation. It's not part of the spec, but you never mentioned the spec originally. - The development model of D on github has adopted a "pull, review and merge" system, where any changes to the language or compiler do not go in unless it goes through proper coding review and testing (thank's to the wonderful auto-tester). So your suggestion of an "open core" model has a slight fallacy here in that any changes to the closed off
Re: DConf 2013 Closing Keynote: Quo Vadis by Andrei Alexandrescu
I've read (almost), everything, so I hope I won't miss a point here: a) I've heard about MSVC, Red Hat, Qt, Linux and so on. From my understanding, none of the projects mentionned have gone from free (as in free beer) to hybrid/closed. And I'm not currently able to think of one successful, widespread project that did. b) Thinking that being free (as a beer and/or as freedom), hybrid, closed source of whatever is a single critera of success seems foolish. I'm not asking for a complete comparison (I think my mailbox won't stand it ;-) ), but please stop comparing a free operating software with a paid compiler, and assume the former have more users than the later because it's free (and vice-versa). In addition, I don't see the logic behind comparing something born in the 90s with something from the 2000s. Remember the Dot-com bubble ? c) There are other way to get more people involved, for exemple if dlang.orgbecomes a foundation (see related thread), we would be able to apply for GSoC. d) People pay for something they need. They don't adopt something because they can pay for it. That's why paid compiler must follow language promotion, not the other way around. 2013/6/27 Joseph Rushton Wakeling > On Wednesday, 26 June 2013 at 21:29:12 UTC, Iain Buclaw wrote: > >> Don't call be Shirley... >> > > Serious? :-) > > By the way, I hope you didn't feel I was trying to speak on behalf of GDC >>> -- wasn't my intention. :-) >>> >> >> I did, and it hurt. :o) >> > > Oh no. 50 shades of #DD ? :-) >
Re: DConf 2013 Closing Keynote: Quo Vadis by Andrei Alexandrescu
On Wednesday, 26 June 2013 at 21:29:12 UTC, Iain Buclaw wrote: Don't call be Shirley... Serious? :-) By the way, I hope you didn't feel I was trying to speak on behalf of GDC -- wasn't my intention. :-) I did, and it hurt. :o) Oh no. 50 shades of #DD ? :-)
Re: DConf 2013 Closing Keynote: Quo Vadis by Andrei Alexandrescu
On Wednesday, 26 June 2013 at 19:01:42 UTC, Joakim wrote: Why are they guaranteed such patches? They have advantages because they use different compiler backends. If they think their backends are so great, let them implement their own optimizations and compete. I could respond at greater length, but I think that substantial flaws of your point of view are exposed in this single paragraph. GDC and LDC aren't competitors, they are valuable collaborators.
Re: DConf 2013 Closing Keynote: Quo Vadis by Andrei Alexandrescu
On Jun 26, 2013 9:50 PM, "Joseph Rushton Wakeling" < joseph.wakel...@webdrake.net> wrote: > > On Wednesday, 26 June 2013 at 19:26:37 UTC, Iain Buclaw wrote: >> >> I can't be bothered to read all points the both of you have mentioned thus far, but I do hope to add a voice of reason to calm you down. ;) > > > Quick, nurse, the screens! > > ... or perhaps, "Someone throw a bucket of water over them"? :-P > > Don't call be Shirley... >> From a licensing perspective, the only part of the source that can be "closed off" is the DMD backend. Any optimisation fixes in the DMD backend does not affect GDC/LDC. > > > To be honest, I can't see the "sales value" of optimization fixes in the DMD backend given that GDC and LDC already have such strong performance. The one strong motivation to use DMD over the other two compilers is (as you describe) access to the bleeding edge of features, but I'd have thought this will stop being an advantage in time as/when the frontend becomes a genuinely "plug-and-play" component. > Sometimes it feels like achieving this is as trying to break down a brick barrier with a shoelace. > By the way, I hope you didn't feel I was trying to speak on behalf of GDC -- wasn't my intention. :-) > I did, and it hurt. :o) >> Having used closed source languages in the past, I strongly believe that closed languages do not stimulate growth or adoption at all. And where adoption does occur, knowledge is kept within specialised groups. > > > Last year I had the dubious privilege of having to work with MS Visual Basic for a temporary job. What was strikingly different from the various open source languages was that although there was an extensive quantity of documentation available from Microsoft, it was incredibly badly organized, much of it was out of date, and there was no meaningful community support that I could find. > > I got the job done, but I would surely have had a much easier experience with any of the open source languages out there. Suffice to say that the only reason I used VB in this case was because it was an obligatory part of the work -- I'd never use it by choice. > Yes, it's like trying to learn D, but the only reference you have of the language is the grammar page, and an IDE which offers thousands of auto-complete options for things that *sound* like what you want, but don't compile when it comes to testing. :o) Regards -- Iain Buclaw *(p < e ? p++ : p) = (c & 0x0f) + '0';
Re: DConf 2013 Closing Keynote: Quo Vadis by Andrei Alexandrescu
On Jun 26, 2013 9:00 PM, "Joakim" wrote: > > On Wednesday, 26 June 2013 at 19:26:37 UTC, Iain Buclaw wrote: >> >> From a licensing perspective, the only part of the source that can be "closed off" is the DMD backend. Any optimisation fixes in the DMD backend does not affect GDC/LDC. > > This is flat wrong. I suggest you read the Artistic license, it was chosen for a reason, ie it allows closing of source as long as you provide the original, unmodified binaries with any modified binaries. I suspect optimization fixes will be in both the frontend and backend. > Code generation is in the back end, so the answer to that is simply 'no'. >> You should try reading The Cathedral and the Bazaar if you don't understand why an open approach to development has caused the D programming language to grow by ten fold over the last year or so. >> >> If you still don't understand, read it again ad infinitum. > > Never read it but I have corresponded with the author, and I found him to be as religious about pure open source as Stallman is about the GPL. I suggest you try examining why D is still such a niche language even with "ten fold" growth. If you're not sure why, I suggest you look at the examples and reasons I've given, as to why closed source and hybrid models do much better. > Then you should read it, as the 'cathedral' in question was GCC - a project started by Stallman. :) >> Think I might just point out that GDC had SIMD support before DMD. And that Remedy used GDC to get their D development off the ground. It was features such as UDAs, along with many language bug fixes that were only available in DMD development that caused them to switch over. >> >> In other words, they needed a faster turnaround for bugs at the time they were adopting D, however the D front-end in GDC stays pretty much stable on the current release. > > Not sure what point you are trying to make, as both gdc and dmd are open source. I'm suggesting closing such patches, for a limited time. > Closing patches benefit no one. And more to the point, you can't say that two compiler's implement the same language if both have different language features. >>> I see no reason why another "upcoming" project like D couldn't do the same. :) >> >> >> You seem to be confusing D for an Operating System, Smartphone, or any general consumer product. > > You seem to be confusing the dmd compiler to not be a piece of software, just like the rest, or the many proprietary C++ compilers out there. > You seem to think when I say D I'm referring to dmd, or any other D compiler out there. > >> - The language implementation is open source. This allows anyone to take the current front-end code - or even write their own clean-room implementation from ground-up - and integrate it to their own backend X. > > Sort of. The dmd frontend is open source, but the backend is not under an open source license. Someone can swap out the backend and go completely closed, for example, using ldc (ldc used to have one or two GPL files, those would obviously have to be removed). > The backend is not part of the D language implementation / specification. (for starters, it's not documented anywhere except as code). >> - The compiler itself is not associated with the development of the language, so those who are owners of the copyright are free to do what they want with their binary releases. >> >> - The development model of D on github has adopted a "pull, review and merge" system, where any changes to the language or compiler do not go in unless it goes through proper coding review and testing (thank's to the wonderful auto-tester). So your suggestion of an "open core" model has a slight fallacy here in that any changes to the closed off compiler would have to go through the same process to be accepted into the open one - and it might even be rejected. > > I'm not sure why you think "open core" patches that are opened after a time limit would be any more likely to be rejected from that review process. The only fallacy I see here is yours. > Where did I say that? I only invited you to speculate on what would happen if a 'closed patch' got rejected. This leads back to the point that you can't call it a compiler for the D programming language if it derives from the specification / implementation. > >> DMD - as in refering to the binary releases - can be closed / paid / whatever it likes. >> >> The D Programming Language - as in the D front-end implementation - is under a dual GPL/Artistic license and cannot be used by any closed source product without said product releasing their copy of the front-end sources also. This means that your "hybrid" proposal only works for code that is not under this license - eg: the DMD backend - which is not what the vast majority of contributors actually submit patches for. > > Wrong, you have clearly not read the Artistic license. > I'll allow you to keep on thinking that for a while longer... >> If you strongly believe that a pro
Re: DConf 2013 Closing Keynote: Quo Vadis by Andrei Alexandrescu
On Wednesday, 26 June 2013 at 19:26:37 UTC, Iain Buclaw wrote: I can't be bothered to read all points the both of you have mentioned thus far, but I do hope to add a voice of reason to calm you down. ;) Quick, nurse, the screens! ... or perhaps, "Someone throw a bucket of water over them"? :-P From a licensing perspective, the only part of the source that can be "closed off" is the DMD backend. Any optimisation fixes in the DMD backend does not affect GDC/LDC. To be honest, I can't see the "sales value" of optimization fixes in the DMD backend given that GDC and LDC already have such strong performance. The one strong motivation to use DMD over the other two compilers is (as you describe) access to the bleeding edge of features, but I'd have thought this will stop being an advantage in time as/when the frontend becomes a genuinely "plug-and-play" component. By the way, I hope you didn't feel I was trying to speak on behalf of GDC -- wasn't my intention. :-) Having used closed source languages in the past, I strongly believe that closed languages do not stimulate growth or adoption at all. And where adoption does occur, knowledge is kept within specialised groups. Last year I had the dubious privilege of having to work with MS Visual Basic for a temporary job. What was strikingly different from the various open source languages was that although there was an extensive quantity of documentation available from Microsoft, it was incredibly badly organized, much of it was out of date, and there was no meaningful community support that I could find. I got the job done, but I would surely have had a much easier experience with any of the open source languages out there. Suffice to say that the only reason I used VB in this case was because it was an obligatory part of the work -- I'd never use it by choice. - The development model of D on github has adopted a "pull, review and merge" system, where any changes to the language or compiler do not go in unless it goes through proper coding review and testing (thank's to the wonderful auto-tester). So your suggestion of an "open core" model has a slight fallacy here in that any changes to the closed off compiler would have to go through the same process to be accepted into the open one - and it might even be rejected. I had a similar thought but from a slightly different angle -- that allowing "open core" in the frontend would damage the effectiveness of the review process. How can you restrict certain features to proprietary versions without having also a two-tier hierarchy of reviewers? And would you be able to maintain the broader range of community review if some select, paid few had privileged review access?
Re: DConf 2013 Closing Keynote: Quo Vadis by Andrei Alexandrescu
On Wednesday, 26 June 2013 at 19:26:37 UTC, Iain Buclaw wrote: From a licensing perspective, the only part of the source that can be "closed off" is the DMD backend. Any optimisation fixes in the DMD backend does not affect GDC/LDC. This is flat wrong. I suggest you read the Artistic license, it was chosen for a reason, ie it allows closing of source as long as you provide the original, unmodified binaries with any modified binaries. I suspect optimization fixes will be in both the frontend and backend. You should try reading The Cathedral and the Bazaar if you don't understand why an open approach to development has caused the D programming language to grow by ten fold over the last year or so. If you still don't understand, read it again ad infinitum. Never read it but I have corresponded with the author, and I found him to be as religious about pure open source as Stallman is about the GPL. I suggest you try examining why D is still such a niche language even with "ten fold" growth. If you're not sure why, I suggest you look at the examples and reasons I've given, as to why closed source and hybrid models do much better. Think I might just point out that GDC had SIMD support before DMD. And that Remedy used GDC to get their D development off the ground. It was features such as UDAs, along with many language bug fixes that were only available in DMD development that caused them to switch over. In other words, they needed a faster turnaround for bugs at the time they were adopting D, however the D front-end in GDC stays pretty much stable on the current release. Not sure what point you are trying to make, as both gdc and dmd are open source. I'm suggesting closing such patches, for a limited time. I see no reason why another "upcoming" project like D couldn't do the same. :) You seem to be confusing D for an Operating System, Smartphone, or any general consumer product. You seem to be confusing the dmd compiler to not be a piece of software, just like the rest, or the many proprietary C++ compilers out there. Having used closed source languages in the past, I strongly believe that closed languages do not stimulate growth or adoption at all. And where adoption does occur, knowledge is kept within specialised groups. Perhaps there is some truth to that. But nobody is suggesting a purely closed-source language either. I don't think a "purely community-run project" is a worthwhile goal, particularly if you are aiming for a million users and professionalism. I think there is always opportunity for mixing of commercial implementations and community involvement, as very successful hybrid projects like Android or Chrome have shown. Your argument seems lost on me as you seem to be taking a very strange angle of association with the D language and/or compiler, and you don't seem to understand how the development process of D works either. I am associating D, an open source project, with Android and Chrome, two of the most successful open source projects at the moment, which both benefit from hybrid models. I find it strange that you cannot follow. If I don't understand how the development process of D works, you could point out an example, instead of making basic mistakes in not knowing what licenses it uses and what they allow. :) - The language implementation is open source. This allows anyone to take the current front-end code - or even write their own clean-room implementation from ground-up - and integrate it to their own backend X. Sort of. The dmd frontend is open source, but the backend is not under an open source license. Someone can swap out the backend and go completely closed, for example, using ldc (ldc used to have one or two GPL files, those would obviously have to be removed). - The compiler itself is not associated with the development of the language, so those who are owners of the copyright are free to do what they want with their binary releases. - The development model of D on github has adopted a "pull, review and merge" system, where any changes to the language or compiler do not go in unless it goes through proper coding review and testing (thank's to the wonderful auto-tester). So your suggestion of an "open core" model has a slight fallacy here in that any changes to the closed off compiler would have to go through the same process to be accepted into the open one - and it might even be rejected. I'm not sure why you think "open core" patches that are opened after a time limit would be any more likely to be rejected from that review process. The only fallacy I see here is yours. - Likewise, because of licensing and copyright assignments in place on the D front-end implementation. Any closed D compiler using it would have to make its sources of the front-end, with local modifications, available upon request. So it makes no sense whatsoever to make language features - such as SIMD -
Re: DConf 2013 Closing Keynote: Quo Vadis by Andrei Alexandrescu
I can't be bothered to read all points the both of you have mentioned thus far, but I do hope to add a voice of reason to calm you down. ;) On Wednesday, 26 June 2013 at 17:42:23 UTC, Joakim wrote: On Wednesday, 26 June 2013 at 12:02:38 UTC, Joseph Rushton Wakeling wrote: Now, in trying to drive more funding and professional effort towards D development, do you _really_ think that the right thing to do is to turn around to all those people and say: "Hey guys, after all the work you put in to make D so great, now we're going to build on that, but you'll have to wait 6 months for the extra goodies unless you pay"? Yes, I think it is the right thing to do. I am only talking about closing off the optimization patches, all bugfixes and feature patches would likely be applied to both the free and paid compilers, certainly bugfixes. So not _all_ the "extra goodies" have to be paid for, and even the optimization patches are eventually open-sourced. From a licensing perspective, the only part of the source that can be "closed off" is the DMD backend. Any optimisation fixes in the DMD backend does not affect GDC/LDC. How do you think that will affect the motivation of all those volunteers -- the code contributors, the bug reporters, the forum participants? What could you say to the maintainers of GDC or LDC, after all they've done to enable people to use the language, that could justify denying their compilers up-to-date access to the latest features? How would it affect the atmosphere of discussion about language development -- compared to the current friendly, collegial approach? I don't know how it will affect their motivation, as they probably differ in the reasons they contribute. If D becomes much more popular because the quality of implementation goes up and their D skills and contributions become much more prized, I suspect they will be very happy. :) If they are religious zealots about having only a single, completely open-source implementation- damn the superior results from hybrid models- perhaps they will be unhappy. I suspect the former far outnumber the latter, since D doesn't employ the purely-GPL approach the zealots usually insist on. You should try reading The Cathedral and the Bazaar if you don't understand why an open approach to development has caused the D programming language to grow by ten fold over the last year or so. If you still don't understand, read it again ad infinitum. ... and -- how do you think it would affect uptake, if it was announced that access to the best features would come at a price? Please stop distorting my argument. There are many different types of patches added to the dmd frontend every day: bugfixes, features, optimizations, etc. I have only proposed closing the optimization patches. However, I do think some features can also be closed this way. For example, Walter has added features like SIMD modifications only for Remedy. He could make this type of feature closed initially, available only in the paid compiler. As the feature matures and is paid for, it would eventually be merged into the free compiler. This is usually not a problem as those who want that kind of performance usually make a lot of money off of it and are happy to pay for that performance: that is all I'm proposing with my optimization patches idea also. Think I might just point out that GDC had SIMD support before DMD. And that Remedy used GDC to get their D development off the ground. It was features such as UDAs, along with many language bug fixes that were only available in DMD development that caused them to switch over. In other words, they needed a faster turnaround for bugs at the time they were adopting D, however the D front-end in GDC stays pretty much stable on the current release. In another email you mentioned Microsoft's revenues from Visual Studio but -- leaving aside for a moment all the moral and strategic concerns of closing things up -- Visual Studio enjoys that success because it's a virtually essential tool for professional development on Microsoft Windows, which still has an effective monopoly on modern desktop computing. Microsoft has the market presence to be able to dictate terms like that -- no one else does. Certainly no upcoming programming language could operate like that! Yes, Microsoft has unusual leverage. But Visual Studio's compiler is not the only paid C++ compiler in the market, hell, Walter still sells C and C++ compilers. I'm not proposing D operate just like Microsoft. I'm suggesting a subtle compromise, a mix of that familiar closed model and the open source model you prefer, a hybrid model that you are no doubt familiar with, since you correctly pegged the licensing lingo earlier, when you mentioned "open core." These hybrid models are immensely popular these days: the two most popular software projects of the last decade, iOS and Android, a
Re: DConf 2013 Closing Keynote: Quo Vadis by Andrei Alexandrescu
On Wednesday, 26 June 2013 at 17:28:22 UTC, Joseph Rushton Wakeling wrote: Perhaps you'd like to explain to the maintainers of GDC and LDC why, after all they've done for D, you think it would be acceptable to turn to them and say: "Hey guys, we're going to make improvements and keep them from you for 9 months so we can make money" ... ? Why are they guaranteed such patches? They have advantages because they use different compiler backends. If they think their backends are so great, let them implement their own optimizations and compete. Or doesn't the cooperative relationship between the 3 main D compilers mean much to you? As I've noted in an earlier response, LDC could also provide a closed version and license those patches. Leaving aside the moral issues, you might consider that any work paid for by revenues would be offset by a drop in voluntary contributions, including corporate contributors. And sensible companies will avoid "open core" solutions. Or maybe the work paid by revenues would be far more and even more people would volunteer, when D becomes a more successful project through funding from the paid compiler. Considering how dominant "open core" and other hybrid models are these days, it is laughable that you suggest that anyone is avoiding it. :) A few articles worth reading on these factors: http://webmink.com/essays/monetisation/ http://webmink.com/essays/open-core/ http://webmink.com/essays/donating-money/ I have corresponded with the author of that blog before. I found him to be a religious zealot who recounted the four freedoms of GNU to me like a mantra. Perhaps that's why Sun was run into the ground when they followed his ideas about open sourcing most everything. I don't look to him for worthwhile reading on these issues. I think this ignores the decades-long history we have with open source software by now. It is not merely "wanting to make the jump," most volunteers simply do not want to do painful tasks like writing documentation or cannot put as much time into development when no money is coming in. Simply saying "We have to try harder to be professional" seems naive to me. Odd that you talk about ignoring things, because the general trend we've seen in the decades-long history of free software is that the software business seems to getting more and more open with every year. These days there's a strong expectation of free licensing. Yes, it is getting "more and more open," because hybrid models are being used more. :) Pure open source software, with no binary blobs, has almost no adoption, so it isn't your preferred purist approach that is doing well. And the reasons are the ones I gave, volunteers can do a lot of things, but there are a lot of things they won't do. It's hardly fair to compare languages without also taking into account their relative age. C++ has its large market share substantially due to historical factors -- it was a major "first mover", and until the advent of D, it was arguably the _only_ language that had that combination of power/flexibility and performance. Yes, C++ has been greatly helped by its age. So far as compiler implementations are concerned, I'd say that it was the fact that there were many different implementations that helped C++. On the other hand, proprietary implementations may in some ways have damaged adoption, as before standardization you'd have competing, incompatible proprietary versions which limited the portability of code. But you neglect to mention that most of those "many different implementations" were closed. I agree that completely closed implementations can also cause incompatibilities, which is why I have suggested a hybrid model with limited closed-source patches. The binary blobs are nevertheless part of the vanilla kernel, not something "value added" that gets charged for. They're irrelevant to the development model of the kernel -- they are an irritation that's tolerated for practical reasons, rather than a design feature. They are not always charged for, but they put the lie to the claims that linux uses a pure open source model. Rather, it is usually a different kind of hybrid model. If it were so pure, there would be no blobs at all. The blobs are certainly not irrelevant, as linux wouldn't run on all the hardware that needs those binary blobs, if they weren't included. Not sure what to make of your non sequitur of binary blobs not being a "design feature." As for paying for blobs, I'll note that the vast majority of linux kernels installed are in Android devices, where one pays for the hardware _and_ the development effort to develop the blobs that run the hardware. So paying for the "value added" from blobs seems to be a very successful model. :) So if one looks at linux in any detail, hybrid models are more the norm than the exception, even with the GPL. :) But no one is selling proprietary extensions to the
Re: DConf 2013 Closing Keynote: Quo Vadis by Andrei Alexandrescu
On Wednesday, 26 June 2013 at 12:02:38 UTC, Joseph Rushton Wakeling wrote: Now, in trying to drive more funding and professional effort towards D development, do you _really_ think that the right thing to do is to turn around to all those people and say: "Hey guys, after all the work you put in to make D so great, now we're going to build on that, but you'll have to wait 6 months for the extra goodies unless you pay"? Yes, I think it is the right thing to do. I am only talking about closing off the optimization patches, all bugfixes and feature patches would likely be applied to both the free and paid compilers, certainly bugfixes. So not _all_ the "extra goodies" have to be paid for, and even the optimization patches are eventually open-sourced. How do you think that will affect the motivation of all those volunteers -- the code contributors, the bug reporters, the forum participants? What could you say to the maintainers of GDC or LDC, after all they've done to enable people to use the language, that could justify denying their compilers up-to-date access to the latest features? How would it affect the atmosphere of discussion about language development -- compared to the current friendly, collegial approach? I don't know how it will affect their motivation, as they probably differ in the reasons they contribute. If D becomes much more popular because the quality of implementation goes up and their D skills and contributions become much more prized, I suspect they will be very happy. :) If they are religious zealots about having only a single, completely open-source implementation- damn the superior results from hybrid models- perhaps they will be unhappy. I suspect the former far outnumber the latter, since D doesn't employ the purely-GPL approach the zealots usually insist on. We could poll them and find out. You keep talking about closed patches as though they can only piss off the volunteers. But if I'm right and a hybrid model would lead to a lot more funding and adoption of D, their volunteer work places them in an ideal position, where their D skills and contributions are much more valued and they can then probably do paid work in D. I suspect most will end up happier. I have not proposed denying GDC and LDC "access to the latest features," only optimization patches. LDC could do the same as dmd and provide a closed, paid version with the optimization patches, which it could license from dmd. GDC couldn't do this, of course, but that is the result of their purist GPL-only approach. Why do you think a hybrid model would materially "affect the atmosphere of discussion about language development?" Do you believe that the people who work on hybrid projects like Android, probably the most widely-used, majority-OSS project in the world, are not able to collaborate effectively? ... and -- how do you think it would affect uptake, if it was announced that access to the best features would come at a price? Please stop distorting my argument. There are many different types of patches added to the dmd frontend every day: bugfixes, features, optimizations, etc. I have only proposed closing the optimization patches. However, I do think some features can also be closed this way. For example, Walter has added features like SIMD modifications only for Remedy. He could make this type of feature closed initially, available only in the paid compiler. As the feature matures and is paid for, it would eventually be merged into the free compiler. This is usually not a problem as those who want that kind of performance usually make a lot of money off of it and are happy to pay for that performance: that is all I'm proposing with my optimization patches idea also. As for how it would "affect uptake," I think most people know that free products are usually less capable than paid products. The people who don't need the capability use Visual Studio Express, those who need it pay for the full version of Visual Studio. There's no reason D couldn't employ a similar segmented model. There are orders of magnitude of difference between uptake of free and non-free services no matter what the domain, and software is one where free (as in freedom and beer) is much more strongly desired than in many other fields. Yes, you're right, non-free services have orders of magnitude more uptake. :p I think there are advantages to both closed and open source, which is why hybrid open/closed source models are currently very popular. Open source allows more collaboration from outside, while closed source allows for _much_ more funding from paying customers. I see no reason to dogmatically insist that these source models not be mixed. There's a big difference between introducing commercial models with a greater degree of paid professional work, and introducing closed components. Red Hat is a good example of that -- I can get, legally
Re: DConf 2013 Closing Keynote: Quo Vadis by Andrei Alexandrescu
On Wednesday, 26 June 2013 at 15:52:33 UTC, Joakim wrote: I suggest you read my original post more carefully. I have not suggested closing up the entire D toolchain, as you seem to imply. I have suggested working on optimization patches in a closed-source manner and providing two versions of the D compiler: one that is faster, closed, and paid, with these optimization patches, another that is slower, open, and free, without the optimization patches. Over time, the optimization patches are merged back to the free branch, so that the funding from the closed compiler makes even the free compiler faster, but only after some delay so that users who value performance will actually pay for the closed compiler. There can be a hard time limit, say nine months, so that you know any closed patches from nine months back will be opened and applied to the free compiler. I suspect that the money will be good enough so that any bugfixes or features added by the closed developers will be added to the free compiler right away, with no delay. Perhaps you'd like to explain to the maintainers of GDC and LDC why, after all they've done for D, you think it would be acceptable to turn to them and say: "Hey guys, we're going to make improvements and keep them from you for 9 months so we can make money" ... ? Or doesn't the cooperative relationship between the 3 main D compilers mean much to you? Thanks for the work that you and Don have done with Sociomantic. Why do you think more companies don't do this? My point is that if there were money coming in from a paid compiler, Walter could fund even more such work. Leaving aside the moral issues, you might consider that any work paid for by revenues would be offset by a drop in voluntary contributions, including corporate contributors. And sensible companies will avoid "open core" solutions. A few articles worth reading on these factors: http://webmink.com/essays/monetisation/ http://webmink.com/essays/open-core/ http://webmink.com/essays/donating-money/ I think this ignores the decades-long history we have with open source software by now. It is not merely "wanting to make the jump," most volunteers simply do not want to do painful tasks like writing documentation or cannot put as much time into development when no money is coming in. Simply saying "We have to try harder to be professional" seems naive to me. Odd that you talk about ignoring things, because the general trend we've seen in the decades-long history of free software is that the software business seems to getting more and more open with every year. These days there's a strong expectation of free licensing. If I understand your story right, the volunteers need to put a lot of effort into "bootstrapping" the project to be more professional, companies will see this and jump in, then they fund development from then on out? It's possible, but is there any example you have in mind? The languages that go this completely FOSS route tend not to have as much adoption as those with closed implementations, like C++. It's hardly fair to compare languages without also taking into account their relative age. C++ has its large market share substantially due to historical factors -- it was a major "first mover", and until the advent of D, it was arguably the _only_ language that had that combination of power/flexibility and performance. So far as compiler implementations are concerned, I'd say that it was the fact that there were many different implementations that helped C++. On the other hand, proprietary implementations may in some ways have damaged adoption, as before standardization you'd have competing, incompatible proprietary versions which limited the portability of code. And yet the linux kernel ships with many binary blobs, almost all the time. I don't know how they legally do it, considering the GPL, yet it is much more common to run a kernel with binary blobs than a purely FOSS version. The vast majority of linux installs are due to Android and every single one has significant binary blobs and closed-source modifications to the Android source, which is allowed since most of Android is under the more liberal Apache license, with only the linux kernel under the GPL. The binary blobs are nevertheless part of the vanilla kernel, not something "value added" that gets charged for. They're irrelevant to the development model of the kernel -- they are an irritation that's tolerated for practical reasons, rather than a design feature. Again, I don't know how they get away with all the binary drivers in the kernel, perhaps that is a grey area with the GPL. For example, even the most open source Android devices, the Nexus devices sold directly by Google and running stock Android, have many binary blobs: https://developers.google.com/android/nexus/drivers Other than Android, linux is really only popular on servers, where
Re: DConf 2013 Closing Keynote: Quo Vadis by Andrei Alexandrescu
On 2013-06-26 15:18, Joseph Rushton Wakeling wrote: They don't own them, though -- they commit resources to them because the language's ongoing development serves their business needs. Yes, exactly. -- /Jacob Carlborg
Re: DConf 2013 Closing Keynote: Quo Vadis by Andrei Alexandrescu
On Wednesday, 26 June 2013 at 11:08:17 UTC, Leandro Lucarella wrote: Joakim, el 25 de June a las 23:37 me escribiste: I don't know the views of the key contributors, but I wonder if they would have such a knee-jerk reaction against any paid/closed work. Against being paid no, against being closed YES. Please don't even think about it. It was a hell of a ride trying to make D more open to step back now. I suggest you read my original post more carefully. I have not suggested closing up the entire D toolchain, as you seem to imply. I have suggested working on optimization patches in a closed-source manner and providing two versions of the D compiler: one that is faster, closed, and paid, with these optimization patches, another that is slower, open, and free, without the optimization patches. Over time, the optimization patches are merged back to the free branch, so that the funding from the closed compiler makes even the free compiler faster, but only after some delay so that users who value performance will actually pay for the closed compiler. There can be a hard time limit, say nine months, so that you know any closed patches from nine months back will be opened and applied to the free compiler. I suspect that the money will be good enough so that any bugfixes or features added by the closed developers will be added to the free compiler right away, with no delay. What we need is companies paying to people to improve the compiler and toolchain. This is slowly starting to happen, in Sociomantic we are already 2 people dedicating some time to improve D as part of our job (Don and me). Thanks for the work that you and Don have done with Sociomantic. Why do you think more companies don't do this? My point is that if there were money coming in from a paid compiler, Walter could fund even more such work. We need more of this, and to get this, we need companies to start using D, and to get this, we need professionalism (I agree 100% with Andrei on this one). Is a bootstrap effort, and is not like volunteers need more time to be professional, is just that you have to want to make the jump. I think this ignores the decades-long history we have with open source software by now. It is not merely "wanting to make the jump," most volunteers simply do not want to do painful tasks like writing documentation or cannot put as much time into development when no money is coming in. Simply saying "We have to try harder to be professional" seems naive to me. I think is way better to do less stuff but with higher quality, nobody is asking people for more time, is just changing the focus a bit, at least for some time. Again, this is only bootstrapping, and is always hard and painful. We need to make the jump to make companies comfortable using D, then things will start rolling by themselves. If I understand your story right, the volunteers need to put a lot of effort into "bootstrapping" the project to be more professional, companies will see this and jump in, then they fund development from then on out? It's possible, but is there any example you have in mind? The languages that go this completely FOSS route tend not to have as much adoption as those with closed implementations, like C++. First of all, your examples are completely wrong. The projects you are mentioning are 100% free, with no closed components (except for components done by third-party). You are misstating what I said: I said "commercial," not "closed," and gave different examples of commercial models. But lets look at them. Your examples are just reinforcing what I say above. Linux is completely GPL, so it's not even only open source. Is Free Software, meaning the license if more restrictive than, for example, phobos. This means is harder to adopt by companies and you can't possibly change it in a closed way if you want to distribute a binary. And yet the linux kernel ships with many binary blobs, almost all the time. I don't know how they legally do it, considering the GPL, yet it is much more common to run a kernel with binary blobs than a purely FOSS version. The vast majority of linux installs are due to Android and every single one has significant binary blobs and closed-source modifications to the Android source, which is allowed since most of Android is under the more liberal Apache license, with only the linux kernel under the GPL. Again, I don't know how they get away with all the binary drivers in the kernel, perhaps that is a grey area with the GPL. For example, even the most open source Android devices, the Nexus devices sold directly by Google and running stock Android, have many binary blobs: https://developers.google.com/android/nexus/drivers Other than Android, linux is really only popular on servers, where you can "change it in a closed way" because you are not "distributing a binary." Google takes advantage of this to run linux on a millio
Re: DConf 2013 Closing Keynote: Quo Vadis by Andrei Alexandrescu
On 26 June 2013 15:04, eles wrote: > On Tuesday, 25 June 2013 at 08:21:38 UTC, Mike Parker wrote: >> >> On Tuesday, 25 June 2013 at 05:57:30 UTC, Peter Williams wrote: >> D Season of Code! Then we don't have to restrict ourselves to one time of >> the year. > > > D Seasons of Code! Why to restrict to a single season? Let's code all the > year long! :) Programmers need to hibernate too, you know. ;) -- Iain Buclaw *(p < e ? p++ : p) = (c & 0x0f) + '0';
Re: DConf 2013 Closing Keynote: Quo Vadis by Andrei Alexandrescu
Jacob Carlborg, el 26 de June a las 14:39 me escribiste: > On 2013-06-26 12:16, Leandro Lucarella wrote: > > >Yeah, right, probably Python and Ruby have only 5k users... > > There are companies backing those languages, at least Ruby, to some > extent. Read my other post, I won't repeat myself :) -- Leandro Lucarella (AKA luca) http://llucax.com.ar/ -- GPG Key: 5F5A8D05 (F8CD F9A7 BF00 5431 4145 104C 949E BFB6 5F5A 8D05) -- JUNTAN FIRMAS Y HUELLAS POR EL CACHORRO CONDENADO A MUERTE... -- Crónica TV
Re: DConf 2013 Closing Keynote: Quo Vadis by Andrei Alexandrescu
On Tuesday, 25 June 2013 at 08:21:38 UTC, Mike Parker wrote: On Tuesday, 25 June 2013 at 05:57:30 UTC, Peter Williams wrote: D Season of Code! Then we don't have to restrict ourselves to one time of the year. D Seasons of Code! Why to restrict to a single season? Let's code all the year long! :)
Re: DConf 2013 Closing Keynote: Quo Vadis by Andrei Alexandrescu
On Wednesday, 26 June 2013 at 12:39:05 UTC, Jacob Carlborg wrote: On 2013-06-26 12:16, Leandro Lucarella wrote: Yeah, right, probably Python and Ruby have only 5k users... There are companies backing those languages, at least Ruby, to some extent. They don't own them, though -- they commit resources to them because the language's ongoing development serves their business needs.
Re: DConf 2013 Closing Keynote: Quo Vadis by Andrei Alexandrescu
On 2013-06-26 12:16, Leandro Lucarella wrote: Yeah, right, probably Python and Ruby have only 5k users... There are companies backing those languages, at least Ruby, to some extent. -- /Jacob Carlborg
Re: DConf 2013 Closing Keynote: Quo Vadis by Andrei Alexandrescu
On Tuesday, 25 June 2013 at 21:38:01 UTC, Joakim wrote: I don't know the views of the key contributors, but I wonder if they would have such a knee-jerk reaction against any paid/closed work. The current situation would seem much more of a kick in the teeth to me: spending time trying to be "professional," as Andrei asks, and producing a viable, stable product used by a million developers, corporate users included, but never receiving any compensation for this great tool you've poured effort into, that your users are presumably often making money with. Obviously I can't speak for the core developers, or even for the community as a group. But I can make the following observations. D's success as a language is _entirely_ down to volunteer effort -- as Walter highlighted in his keynote. Volunteer effort is responsible for the development of the compiler frontend, the runtime, and the standard library. Volunteers have put in the hard work of porting these to other compiler backends. Volunteers have made and reviewed language improvement proposals, and have been vigilant in reporting and resolving bugs. Volunteers also contribute to vibrant discussions on these very forums, providing support and advice to those in need of help. And many of these volunteers have been doing so over the course of years. Now, in trying to drive more funding and professional effort towards D development, do you _really_ think that the right thing to do is to turn around to all those people and say: "Hey guys, after all the work you put in to make D so great, now we're going to build on that, but you'll have to wait 6 months for the extra goodies unless you pay"? How do you think that will affect the motivation of all those volunteers -- the code contributors, the bug reporters, the forum participants? What could you say to the maintainers of GDC or LDC, after all they've done to enable people to use the language, that could justify denying their compilers up-to-date access to the latest features? How would it affect the atmosphere of discussion about language development -- compared to the current friendly, collegial approach? ... and -- how do you think it would affect uptake, if it was announced that access to the best features would come at a price? There are orders of magnitude of difference between uptake of free and non-free services no matter what the domain, and software is one where free (as in freedom and beer) is much more strongly desired than in many other fields. I understand that such a shift from being mostly OSS to having some closed components can be tricky, but that depends on the particular community. I don't think any OSS project has ever become popular without having some sort of commercial model attached to it. C++ would be nowhere without commercial compilers; linux would be unheard of without IBM and Red Hat figuring out a consulting/support model around it; and Android would not have put the linux kernel on hundreds of millions of computing devices without the hybrid model that Google employed, where they provide an open source core, paid for through increased ad revenue from Android devices, and the hardware vendors provide closed hardware drivers and UI skins on top of the OSS core. There's a big difference between introducing commercial models with a greater degree of paid professional work, and introducing closed components. Red Hat is a good example of that -- I can get, legally and for free, a fully functional copy of Red Hat Enterprise Linux without paying a penny. It's just missing the Red Hat name and logos and the support contract. In another email you mentioned Microsoft's revenues from Visual Studio but -- leaving aside for a moment all the moral and strategic concerns of closing things up -- Visual Studio enjoys that success because it's a virtually essential tool for professional development on Microsoft Windows, which still has an effective monopoly on modern desktop computing. Microsoft has the market presence to be able to dictate terms like that -- no one else does. Certainly no upcoming programming language could operate like that! This talk prominently mentioned scaling to a million users and being professional: going commercial is the only way to get there. It's more likely that closing off parts of the offering would limit that uptake, for reasons already given. On the other hand, with more and more organizations coming to use and rely on D, there are plenty of other ways professional development could be brought in. Just to take one example: companies with a mission-critical interest in D have a corresponding interest in their developers giving time to the language itself. How many such companies do you think there need to be before D has a stable of skilled professional developers being paid explicitly to maintain and develop the language? Your citation of the Linux kerne
Re: DConf 2013 Closing Keynote: Quo Vadis by Andrei Alexandrescu
On Wednesday, 26 June 2013 at 11:08:17 UTC, Leandro Lucarella wrote: Android might be the only valid case (but I'm not really familiar with Android model), but the kernel, since is based on Linux, has to have the source code when released. Maybe the drivers are closed source. It is perfectly open http://source.android.com/source/licenses.html ;) Drivers tend to be closed source, but drivers are not part fo Android project, they are private to vendors.
Re: DConf 2013 Closing Keynote: Quo Vadis by Andrei Alexandrescu
Joakim, el 26 de June a las 08:33 me escribiste: > It is amazing how far D has gotten with no business model: money > certainly isn't everything. But it is probably impossible to get to > a million users or offer professionalism without commercial > implementations. Yeah, right, probably Python and Ruby have only 5k users... This argument is BS. -- Leandro Lucarella (AKA luca) http://llucax.com.ar/ -- GPG Key: 5F5A8D05 (F8CD F9A7 BF00 5431 4145 104C 949E BFB6 5F5A 8D05) -- Are you such a dreamer? To put the world to rights? I'll stay home forever Where two & two always makes up five
Re: DConf 2013 Closing Keynote: Quo Vadis by Andrei Alexandrescu
Joakim, el 25 de June a las 23:37 me escribiste: > On Tuesday, 25 June 2013 at 20:58:16 UTC, Joseph Rushton Wakeling > wrote: > >>I wonder what the response would be to injecting some money and > >>commercialism into the D ecosystem. > > > >Given how D's whole success stems from its community, I think an > >"open core" model (even with time-lapse) would be disastrous. It'd > >be like kicking everyone in the teeth after all the work they put > >in. > I don't know the views of the key contributors, but I wonder if they > would have such a knee-jerk reaction against any paid/closed work. Against being paid no, against being closed YES. Please don't even think about it. It was a hell of a ride trying to make D more open to step back now. What we need is companies paying to people to improve the compiler and toolchain. This is slowly starting to happen, in Sociomantic we are already 2 people dedicating some time to improve D as part of our job (Don and me). We need more of this, and to get this, we need companies to start using D, and to get this, we need professionalism (I agree 100% with Andrei on this one). Is a bootstrap effort, and is not like volunteers need more time to be professional, is just that you have to want to make the jump. I think is way better to do less stuff but with higher quality, nobody is asking people for more time, is just changing the focus a bit, at least for some time. Again, this is only bootstrapping, and is always hard and painful. We need to make the jump to make companies comfortable using D, then things will start rolling by themselves. > The current situation would seem much more of a kick in the teeth to > me: spending time trying to be "professional," as Andrei asks, and > producing a viable, stable product used by a million developers, > corporate users included, but never receiving any compensation for > this great tool you've poured effort into, that your users are > presumably often making money with. > > I understand that such a shift from being mostly OSS to having some > closed components can be tricky, but that depends on the particular > community. I don't think any OSS project has ever become popular > without having some sort of commercial model attached to it. C++ > would be nowhere without commercial compilers; linux would be > unheard of without IBM and Red Hat figuring out a consulting/support > model around it; and Android would not have put the linux kernel on > hundreds of millions of computing devices without the hybrid model > that Google employed, where they provide an open source core, paid > for through increased ad revenue from Android devices, and the > hardware vendors provide closed hardware drivers and UI skins on top > of the OSS core. First of all, your examples are completely wrong. The projects you are mentioning are 100% free, with no closed components (except for components done by third-party). Your examples are just reinforcing what I say above. Linux is completely GPL, so it's not even only open source. Is Free Software, meaning the license if more restrictive than, for example, phobos. This means is harder to adopt by companies and you can't possibly change it in a closed way if you want to distribute a binary. Same for C++, which is not a project, is a standards, but the most successful and widespread compiler, GCC, not only is free, is the battle horse of free software, of the GNU project and created by the most extremist free software advocate ever. Android might be the only valid case (but I'm not really familiar with Android model), but the kernel, since is based on Linux, has to have the source code when released. Maybe the drivers are closed source. You are missing more closely related projects, like Python, Haskel, Ruby, Perl, and probably 90% of the newish programming languages, which are all 100% open source. And very successful I might say. The key is always breaking into the corporate ground and make those corporations contribute. There are valid examples of project using hybrid models but they are usually software as a service models, not very applicable to a compiler/language, like Wordpress, or other web applications. Other valid examples are MySQL, or QT I think used an hybrid model at least once. Lots of them died and were resurrected as 100% free projects, like StarOffice -> OpenOffice -> LibreOffice. And finally making the *optimizer* (or some optimizations) closed will be hardly a good business, being that there are 2 other backends out there that usually kicks DMD backend ass already, so people needing more speed will probably just switch to gdc or ldc. > This talk prominently mentioned scaling to a million users and being > professional: going commercial is the only way to get there. As in breaking into the commercial world? Then agreed. If you imply commercial == closing some parts of the source, then I think you are WAY OFF. -- Leandro Lucarella (AKA luca) http://llucax.com.ar/
Re: DConf 2013 Closing Keynote: Quo Vadis by Andrei Alexandrescu
On Wednesday, 26 June 2013 at 01:25:42 UTC, Bill Baxter wrote: On Tue, Jun 25, 2013 at 2:37 PM, Joakim wrote: This talk prominently mentioned scaling to a million users and being professional: going commercial is the only way to get there. IDEs are something you can have a freemium model for. Core languages are not these days. If you have to pay to get the optimized version of the language there are just too many other places to look that don't charge. You want the best version of the language to be in everyone's hands... Hard to make much money selling things to developers. I agree that there is a lot of competition for programming languages. However, Visual Studio brought in $400 million in extensions alone a couple years back: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/somasegar/archive/2011/04/12/happy-1st-birthday-visual-studio-2010.aspx Microsoft doesn't break out numbers for Visual Studio itself, but it might be a billion+ dollars a year, not to mention all the other commercial C++ compilers out there. If the aim is to displace C++ and gain a million users, it is impossible to do so without commercial implementations. All the languages that you are thinking about that do no offer a single commercial implementation- remember, even Perl and Python have commercial options, eg ActiveState- have almost no usage compared to C++. It is true that there are large companies like Apple or Sun/Oracle that give away a lot of tooling for free, but D doesn't have such corporate backing. It is amazing how far D has gotten with no business model: money certainly isn't everything. But it is probably impossible to get to a million users or offer professionalism without commercial implementations. In any case, the fact that the D front-end is under the Artistic license and most of the rest of the code is released under similarly liberal licensing means that someone can do this on their own, without any other permission from the community, and I expect that if D is successful, someone will. I'm simply suggesting that the original developers jump-start that process by doing it themselves, in the hybrid form I've suggested, rather than potentially getting cut out of the decision-making process when somebody else does it.
Re: DConf 2013 Closing Keynote: Quo Vadis by Andrei Alexandrescu
On Tue, Jun 25, 2013 at 2:37 PM, Joakim wrote: > On Tuesday, 25 June 2013 at 20:58:16 UTC, Joseph Rushton Wakeling wrote: > >> I wonder what the response would be to injecting some money and >>> commercialism into the D ecosystem. >>> >> >> Given how D's whole success stems from its community, I think an "open >> core" model (even with time-lapse) would be disastrous. It'd be like >> kicking everyone in the teeth after all the work they put in. >> > I don't know the views of the key contributors, but I wonder if they would > have such a knee-jerk reaction against any paid/closed work. The current > situation would seem much more of a kick in the teeth to me: spending time > trying to be "professional," as Andrei asks, and producing a viable, stable > product used by a million developers, corporate users included, but never > receiving any compensation for this great tool you've poured effort into, > that your users are presumably often making money with. > > I understand that such a shift from being mostly OSS to having some closed > components can be tricky, but that depends on the particular community. I > don't think any OSS project has ever become popular without having some > sort of commercial model attached to it. C++ would be nowhere without > commercial compilers; linux would be unheard of without IBM and Red Hat > figuring out a consulting/support model around it; and Android would not > have put the linux kernel on hundreds of millions of computing devices > without the hybrid model that Google employed, where they provide an open > source core, paid for through increased ad revenue from Android devices, > and the hardware vendors provide closed hardware drivers and UI skins on > top of the OSS core. > > This talk prominently mentioned scaling to a million users and being > professional: going commercial is the only way to get there. > IDEs are something you can have a freemium model for. Core languages are not these days. If you have to pay to get the optimized version of the language there are just too many other places to look that don't charge. You want the best version of the language to be in everyone's hands. But there can be some tools you have to pay for. http://www.wingware.com/ is a good example of a commercial Python IDE that adds value to the community with a commercial offering. I paid for a copy back when I was doing a lot of python development. It is definitely not a business I would want to be in, though. I was surprised to see they are still alive, actually. Hard to make much money selling things to developers. --bb
Re: DConf 2013 Closing Keynote: Quo Vadis by Andrei Alexandrescu
On 26 June 2013 09:59, Peter Williams wrote: > On 26/06/13 06:14, Nick Sabalausky wrote: > >> On Tue, 25 Jun 2013 15:57:18 +1000 >> Peter Williams wrote: >> >>> >>> Can you think of a better name than "D Summer Of Code"? It's very >>> northern hemisphere centric and makes us southerners feel like the >>> rest of the world doesn't know there is a southern hemisphere (or if >>> they do that they don't know the seasons work) :-). >>> >>> >> I'm pretty sure the southern hemisphere has summer too...It's just a lot >> colder ;) Nobody called it "D Warm-Summer of Code". >> >> > Not all of it. In tropical Australia, they have two seasons - the wet > season (aka the suicide season) and the dry season :-). I like to think of it as the soaking bloody wet season, and the slightly less wet season ;) Slightly more tolerable than indonesia, which has only a single 'soaking wet at precisely 4pm every day, but otherwise lovely weather (if you like humidity) season'...
Re: DConf 2013 Closing Keynote: Quo Vadis by Andrei Alexandrescu
On 26/06/13 06:14, Nick Sabalausky wrote: On Tue, 25 Jun 2013 15:57:18 +1000 Peter Williams wrote: Can you think of a better name than "D Summer Of Code"? It's very northern hemisphere centric and makes us southerners feel like the rest of the world doesn't know there is a southern hemisphere (or if they do that they don't know the seasons work) :-). I'm pretty sure the southern hemisphere has summer too...It's just a lot colder ;) Nobody called it "D Warm-Summer of Code". Not all of it. In tropical Australia, they have two seasons - the wet season (aka the suicide season) and the dry season :-). Peter
Re: DConf 2013 Closing Keynote: Quo Vadis by Andrei Alexandrescu
On Mon, 24 Jun 2013 09:13:48 -0700 Andrei Alexandrescu wrote: > reddit: > http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/1gz40q/dconf_2013_closing_keynote_quo_vadis_by_andrei/ > Torrents and links up, plus a torrent now for the original MP4 of the previous talk: http://semitwist.com/download/misc/dconf2013/
Re: DConf 2013 Closing Keynote: Quo Vadis by Andrei Alexandrescu
On Tuesday, 25 June 2013 at 20:58:16 UTC, Joseph Rushton Wakeling wrote: I wonder what the response would be to injecting some money and commercialism into the D ecosystem. Given how D's whole success stems from its community, I think an "open core" model (even with time-lapse) would be disastrous. It'd be like kicking everyone in the teeth after all the work they put in. I don't know the views of the key contributors, but I wonder if they would have such a knee-jerk reaction against any paid/closed work. The current situation would seem much more of a kick in the teeth to me: spending time trying to be "professional," as Andrei asks, and producing a viable, stable product used by a million developers, corporate users included, but never receiving any compensation for this great tool you've poured effort into, that your users are presumably often making money with. I understand that such a shift from being mostly OSS to having some closed components can be tricky, but that depends on the particular community. I don't think any OSS project has ever become popular without having some sort of commercial model attached to it. C++ would be nowhere without commercial compilers; linux would be unheard of without IBM and Red Hat figuring out a consulting/support model around it; and Android would not have put the linux kernel on hundreds of millions of computing devices without the hybrid model that Google employed, where they provide an open source core, paid for through increased ad revenue from Android devices, and the hardware vendors provide closed hardware drivers and UI skins on top of the OSS core. This talk prominently mentioned scaling to a million users and being professional: going commercial is the only way to get there.
Re: DConf 2013 Closing Keynote: Quo Vadis by Andrei Alexandrescu
On Tuesday, 25 June 2013 at 15:44:02 UTC, Joakim wrote: Just finished watching Andrei's talk, it was up to his usual high standard. I found the bits about professionalism a bit weird though: can we really expect that from a volunteer effort? I'm pretty sure the A/V guys at the conference weren't volunteers, ie they were paid. Along the line that QAston started, if you want more professionalism, is there any interest in producing a commercial D compiler? If not, why not? I notice that Walter sells C and C++ compilers and source on digitalmars.com, but strangely not D. There are interesting business/source models nowadays where you can be mostly open source and still sell a commercial product. For example, Walter has often talked about optimizations in the compiler that he'd like to get to. There could be two compilers: one where the source is fully publicly available, another made available to paying users, which has additional optimizations done either by Walter or others who he supervises, but the source for those optimizations would not be available publicly, though perhaps made available only to the buyers under a non-OSS license. After enough time has passed for the optimization work to be paid for, the optimization patches would eventually be merged into the slower, non-paid version. Android uses a similar hybrid model, which has obviously been enormously successful. Another possibility is a bounty system, where users pledge money towards needed features or bug fixes. It'd basically be a more distributed version of the hybrid approach I've outlined. I wonder what the response would be to injecting some money and commercialism into the D ecosystem. Given how D's whole success stems from its community, I think an "open core" model (even with time-lapse) would be disastrous. It'd be like kicking everyone in the teeth after all the work they put in.
Re: DConf 2013 Closing Keynote: Quo Vadis by Andrei Alexandrescu
On 2013-06-25 11:42, Jonas Drewsen wrote: I'm a Danish guy so there is a at least one dane using D :) Tomas Lindquist Olsen, creator of LDC (LLVMDC back then) is Danish, if I recall correctly. -- /Jacob Carlborg
Re: DConf 2013 Closing Keynote: Quo Vadis by Andrei Alexandrescu
On 6/24/13 9:13 AM, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote: reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/1gz40q/dconf_2013_closing_keynote_quo_vadis_by_andrei/ facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dlang.org/posts/662488747098143 twitter: https://twitter.com/D_Programming/status/349197737805373441 hackernews: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5933818 youtube: http://youtube.com/watch?v=4M-0LFBP9AU Andrei HD version available: http://archive.org/details/dconf2013-day03-talk06 Andrei
Re: DConf 2013 Closing Keynote: Quo Vadis by Andrei Alexandrescu
On Tue, 25 Jun 2013 15:57:18 +1000 Peter Williams wrote: > > Can you think of a better name than "D Summer Of Code"? It's very > northern hemisphere centric and makes us southerners feel like the > rest of the world doesn't know there is a southern hemisphere (or if > they do that they don't know the seasons work) :-). > I'm pretty sure the southern hemisphere has summer too...It's just a lot colder ;) Nobody called it "D Warm-Summer of Code".
Re: DConf 2013 Closing Keynote: Quo Vadis by Andrei Alexandrescu
On 06/24/2013 10:57 PM, Peter Williams wrote: > Can you think of a better name than "D Summer Of Code"? It's very > northern hemisphere centric and makes us southerners feel like the rest > of the world doesn't know there is a southern hemisphere The only southern country is Mexico, which I am told is in the Northern hemisphere. :p Ali
Re: DConf 2013 Closing Keynote: Quo Vadis by Andrei Alexandrescu
Just finished watching Andrei's talk, it was up to his usual high standard. I found the bits about professionalism a bit weird though: can we really expect that from a volunteer effort? I'm pretty sure the A/V guys at the conference weren't volunteers, ie they were paid. Along the line that QAston started, if you want more professionalism, is there any interest in producing a commercial D compiler? If not, why not? I notice that Walter sells C and C++ compilers and source on digitalmars.com, but strangely not D. There are interesting business/source models nowadays where you can be mostly open source and still sell a commercial product. For example, Walter has often talked about optimizations in the compiler that he'd like to get to. There could be two compilers: one where the source is fully publicly available, another made available to paying users, which has additional optimizations done either by Walter or others who he supervises, but the source for those optimizations would not be available publicly, though perhaps made available only to the buyers under a non-OSS license. After enough time has passed for the optimization work to be paid for, the optimization patches would eventually be merged into the slower, non-paid version. Android uses a similar hybrid model, which has obviously been enormously successful. Another possibility is a bounty system, where users pledge money towards needed features or bug fixes. It'd basically be a more distributed version of the hybrid approach I've outlined. I wonder what the response would be to injecting some money and commercialism into the D ecosystem.
Re: DConf 2013 Closing Keynote: Quo Vadis by Andrei Alexandrescu
Peter Williams, el 25 de June a las 15:57 me escribiste: > On 25/06/13 02:13, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote: > >reddit: > >http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/1gz40q/dconf_2013_closing_keynote_quo_vadis_by_andrei/ > > > > > >facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dlang.org/posts/662488747098143 > > > >twitter: https://twitter.com/D_Programming/status/349197737805373441 > > > >hackernews: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5933818 > > > >youtube: http://youtube.com/watch?v=4M-0LFBP9AU > > > > > >Andrei > > Can you think of a better name than "D Summer Of Code"? It's very > northern hemisphere centric and makes us southerners feel like the > rest of the world doesn't know there is a southern hemisphere (or if > they do that they don't know the seasons work) :-). Or they know, but they just don't give a fuck :) -- Leandro Lucarella (AKA luca) http://llucax.com.ar/ -- GPG Key: 5F5A8D05 (F8CD F9A7 BF00 5431 4145 104C 949E BFB6 5F5A 8D05) -- The average person laughs 13 times a day
Re: DConf 2013 Closing Keynote: Quo Vadis by Andrei Alexandrescu
I'm a Danish guy so there is a at least one dane using D :) /Jonas
Re: DConf 2013 Closing Keynote: Quo Vadis by Andrei Alexandrescu
On Tuesday, 25 June 2013 at 05:57:30 UTC, Peter Williams wrote: Can you think of a better name than "D Summer Of Code"? It's very northern hemisphere centric and makes us southerners feel like the rest of the world doesn't know there is a southern hemisphere (or if they do that they don't know the seasons work) :-). Peter D Season of Code! Then we don't have to restrict ourselves to one time of the year.
Re: DConf 2013 Closing Keynote: Quo Vadis by Andrei Alexandrescu
On 25/06/13 02:13, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote: reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/1gz40q/dconf_2013_closing_keynote_quo_vadis_by_andrei/ facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dlang.org/posts/662488747098143 twitter: https://twitter.com/D_Programming/status/349197737805373441 hackernews: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5933818 youtube: http://youtube.com/watch?v=4M-0LFBP9AU Andrei Can you think of a better name than "D Summer Of Code"? It's very northern hemisphere centric and makes us southerners feel like the rest of the world doesn't know there is a southern hemisphere (or if they do that they don't know the seasons work) :-). Peter
Re: DConf 2013 Closing Keynote: Quo Vadis by Andrei Alexandrescu
On 6/24/13 9:19 AM, David Gileadi wrote: Slides seem to be missing from http://dconf.org/2013/talks/alexandrescu.pdf; I get a 404. I posted too soon; they're there now. Sorry for the noise.
Re: DConf 2013 Closing Keynote: Quo Vadis by Andrei Alexandrescu
Slides seem to be missing from http://dconf.org/2013/talks/alexandrescu.pdf; I get a 404.
DConf 2013 Closing Keynote: Quo Vadis by Andrei Alexandrescu
reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/1gz40q/dconf_2013_closing_keynote_quo_vadis_by_andrei/ facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dlang.org/posts/662488747098143 twitter: https://twitter.com/D_Programming/status/349197737805373441 hackernews: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5933818 youtube: http://youtube.com/watch?v=4M-0LFBP9AU Andrei
