On 26/04/12 14:58, Joseph Rushton Wakeling wrote:
> On 26/04/12 11:07, Don Clugston wrote:
>> <rant>
>> "open source" is a horrible, duplicitous term. Really what you mean is
>> "the
>> license is not GPL compatible".
>> </rant>
>
> No, I don't mean "GPL compatible". I'd be perfectly happy for the DMD
> backend to be released under a GPL-incompatible free/open source licence
> like the CDDL.
>
> The problem is not GPL compatibility but whether sufficient freedoms are
> granted to distribute and modify sources.

And the only one such limitation of freedom which has ever been identified, in numerous posts (hundreds!) on this topic, is that the license is not GPL compatible and therefore cannot be distributed with (say) OS distributions.

Everything else is FUD.

On 26/04/12 16:59, Don Clugston wrote:
> And the only one such limitation of freedom which has ever been identified, in
> numerous posts (hundreds!) on this topic, is that the license is not GPL
> compatible and therefore cannot be distributed with (say) OS distributions.

Yes, I appreciate I touched on a sore point and one that must have been discussed to death.  I wasn't meaning to add to the noise, but your response to my original email was so hostile I felt I had to reply at length to clarify.

I personally don't think it's a minor issue that the reference version of D can't be included with open source distributions, but I also think there are much more pressing immediate issues than this to resolve in the short term.

By the way, there are plenty of non-GPL-compatible licences that have traditionally been considered acceptable by open source distributions -- the original Mozilla Public Licence and Apache Licence (new versions have since been released which ensure compatibility), at least one variant of the permissive BSD/MIT licences, and probably others.  It's whether the licence implements the "four freedoms" that matters.

On 4/26/2012 2:27 AM, Jonathan M Davis wrote:
> I think that the "openness" of dmd being an issue is purely  a matter of
> misunderstandings and FUD. And if Walter _could_ make the backend GPL, he may
> very well have done so ages ago. But he can't, so there's no point in
> complaining about it - especially since it doesn't impede your ability to use
> dmd.

I have tried, but failed.

I also agree with you that it's moot, as LDC and GDC exist.

On Apr 26, 2012, at 5:58 AM, Joseph Rushton Wakeling wrote:

> The problem is not GPL compatibility but whether sufficient freedoms are granted to distribute and modify sources.  That has a knockon impact on the ability of 3rd parties to package and distribute the software, to patch it without necessarily going via upstream, etc. etc., all of which affects the degree to which others can easily use the language.

While distributing modified sources is certainly one way of dealing with changes not represented by the official distribution, I prefer distributing patches instead.  It's easier to audit what's being changed, and updating to a new release tends to be easier.

On 26/04/12 21:08, Walter Bright wrote:
> I have tried, but failed.
>
> I also agree with you that it's moot, as LDC and GDC exist.

I think I should probably add here that I do recognize the amount of effort you've put in here, and wasn't intending to be pejorative about DMD.  I just think it's a terrible shame that you've been constrained in this way.

On Thursday, 26 April 2012 at 09:28:30 UTC, Jonathan M Davis wrote:
> Whether the backend is open or not has _zero_ impact on your ability to use
> it. The source is freely available, so you can look at and see what it does.

Casual users are generally ignorant about licenses (as long as they can use the software), but not geeks - and proprietary software has bad publicity, it's not something technical, just a reputation.

On 04/26/2012 10:59 AM, Don Clugston wrote:
>>
>> No, I don't mean "GPL compatible". I'd be perfectly happy for the DMD
>> backend to be released under a GPL-incompatible free/open source licence
>> like the CDDL.
>>
>> The problem is not GPL compatibility but whether sufficient freedoms are
>> granted to distribute and modify sources.
>
> And the only one such limitation of freedom which has ever been
> identified, in numerous posts (hundreds!) on this topic, is that the
> license is not GPL compatible and therefore cannot be distributed with
> (say) OS distributions.

I don't understand your fixation on the GPL, as even a GPL-incompatible license would allow it to be distributed on FOSS operating systems like Debian or Fedora. The important principle, which you've been ignoring for some reason, is that you can redistribute the source along with modifications. This is not special to GPL, and is fundamental both to open source and Free Software.

On Tuesday, 24 April 2012 at 12:50:27 UTC, Eljay wrote:
> ---
>
> And the most important bit of information:  I use vi (Vim).

I think that the type of application where D is proving itself right now is high performance server applications, and particularly web servers. D seems completely fit to replace Java on most server apps, with both better performance and better memory usage.
The web interface to the newsgroups, as well as the recently revealed vibe.d web server seem to support this view.

D can handle both batch and real time treatments really well I think. That is where it can gain a lot of weight in the enterprise, even before games and scientific applications.

On Friday, 27 April 2012 at 23:28:09 UTC, SomeDude wrote:
> On Tuesday, 24 April 2012 at 12:50:27 UTC, Eljay wrote:
>> ---
>>
>> And the most important bit of information:  I use vi (Vim).
>
> I think that the type of application where D is proving itself right now is high performance server applications, and particularly web servers. D seems completely fit to replace Java on most server apps, with both better performance and better memory usage.
> The web interface to the newsgroups, as well as the recently revealed vibe.d web server seem to support this view.
>
> D can handle both batch and real time treatments really well I think. That is where it can gain a lot of weight in the enterprise, even before games and scientific applications.

The other thing that would make it attractive among the C++ developers, would be the development of a lightweight, high performance, minimal library that doesn't use the GC at all. Ideally, it would be compatible with Phobos. I bet if such a library existed, flocks of C++ developers would suddenly switch to D.

On Sat, Apr 28, 2012 at 01:31:32AM +0200, SomeDude wrote: [...]
> The other thing that would make it attractive among the C++ developers, would be the development of a lightweight, high performance, minimal library that doesn't use the GC at all.  Ideally, it would be compatible with Phobos. I bet if such a library existed, flocks of C++ developers would suddenly switch to D.

I know the current GC leaves much room for improvement, but what's the hangup about the GC anyway? If -- and yes this is a very big if -- the GC has real-time guarantees, would that make it more palatable to C++ devs? Or is it just because they have trouble with the idea of having a GC in the first place?


T

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