Out of curiosity

What is the history between dmd and symantec
I was able to find few things online

I know that there once was a company called zorland, which later becamse
zortech

Zortech, created c/c++ compilers
Symantec tookover zortech, to get into the compiler business

Walter Albright, was part of Zortech (not clear if he was the founder or an employee)

But this is what I was able to find ends

How was dmd started in Symantec, did they sell a D compiler for a while, did they use it internally as a competitive advantage, what was Symantec plans for D?

Just curious .. if Walter care to share, or if someone else knows more than I do, please share

Judging by copyright dates Symantec stopped development in 1998, and D was started in 2000.

On 3 February 2018 at 16:47, Ali via Digitalmars-d <digitalmars-d@puremagic.com> wrote:
> Out of curiosity
>
> What is the history between dmd and symantec
> I was able to find few things online
>
> I know that there once was a company called zorland, which later becamse zortech
>
> Zortech, created c/c++ compilers
> Symantec tookover zortech, to get into the compiler business
>
> Walter Albright, was part of Zortech (not clear if he was the founder or an
> employee)
>
> But this is what I was able to find ends
>
> How was dmd started in Symantec, did they sell a D compiler for a while, did they use it internally as a competitive advantage, what was Symantec plans for D?
>
> Just curious .. if Walter care to share, or if someone else knows more than I do, please share


http://www.drdobbs.com/cpp/symantec-c-professional/184409168

On Saturday, 3 February 2018 at 15:47:59 UTC, Ali wrote:
> Out of curiosity
>
> What is the history between dmd and symantec
> I was able to find few things online
>
> I know that there once was a company called zorland, which later becamse
> zortech
>
> Zortech, created c/c++ compilers
> Symantec tookover zortech, to get into the compiler business
>
> Walter Albright, was part of Zortech (not clear if he was the founder or an employee)
>
> But this is what I was able to find ends
>
> How was dmd started in Symantec, did they sell a D compiler for a while, did they use it internally as a competitive advantage, what was Symantec plans for D?
>
> Just curious .. if Walter care to share, or if someone else knows more than I do, please share

I found this link

https://dlang.org/blog/2017/10/25/dmd-windows-and-c/

And I think those few lined quoted below answers one of my question, How did Symantec have any rights to the dmd backend

"When a new programming language is born these days, it’s not uncommon for its tooling to be built on top of an existing toolchain"

"So it was a no-brainer to make use of his existing tools and compiler backend and just focus on making a new frontend for DMD."

"Finally, Symantec had the legal rights to the existing backend, which meant their license would apply to DMD."

Some people had the impression that D started as a closed source project( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16270937 )
I believe this proves this perception wrong

On 05/02/2018 5:07 PM, Ali wrote:
> On Saturday, 3 February 2018 at 15:47:59 UTC, Ali wrote:
>> Out of curiosity
>>
>> What is the history between dmd and symantec
>> I was able to find few things online
>>
>> I know that there once was a company called zorland, which later becamse
>> zortech
>>
>> Zortech, created c/c++ compilers
>> Symantec tookover zortech, to get into the compiler business
>>
>> Walter Albright, was part of Zortech (not clear if he was the founder or an employee)
>>
>> But this is what I was able to find ends
>>
>> How was dmd started in Symantec, did they sell a D compiler for a while, did they use it internally as a competitive advantage, what was Symantec plans for D?
>>
>> Just curious .. if Walter care to share, or if someone else knows more than I do, please share
> 
> I found this link
> 
> https://dlang.org/blog/2017/10/25/dmd-windows-and-c/
> 
> And I think those few lined quoted below answers one of my question, How did Symantec have any rights to the dmd backend
> 
> "When a new programming language is born these days, it’s not uncommon for its tooling to be built on top of an existing toolchain"
> 
> "So it was a no-brainer to make use of his existing tools and compiler backend and just focus on making a new frontend for DMD."
> 
> "Finally, Symantec had the legal rights to the existing backend, which meant their license would apply to DMD."
> 
> Some people had the impression that D started as a closed source project( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16270937 )
> I believe this proves this perception wrong

The comment is correct, dmd was indeed closed source for a good number of years.

I believe it was Brad (from my hazy memory) who when joined got it opened up (and had the bug tracker installed too).

On Tuesday, February 06, 2018 03:07:02 rikki cattermole via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> The comment is correct, dmd was indeed closed source for a good number of years.
>
> I believe it was Brad (from my hazy memory) who when joined got it
> opened up (and had the bug tracker installed too).

Regardless of that though, most of the complaints about dmd's backend not being open source have been because the license wasn't open source even though the source was available, and far too many folks seem to have thought that the entire compiler was closed source when the front-end was actually open - to the point that it was relicensed so that gdc could be part of gcc, and that didn't need to get Symantec involved at all.

Fortunately, it's all Boost now, so none of this is a problem anymore, but historically, there have been a lot of misunderstandings about how open dmd has been due to the fact that the backend wasn't fully open source.

- Jonathan M Davis

On Tuesday, 6 February 2018 at 03:07:02 UTC, rikki cattermole wrote:
> The comment is correct, dmd was indeed closed source for a good number of years.

dmd's frontend has been GPL licensed since at least version 0.50, released Nov 20, 2002. You can still download these old archives off the digital mars website. This fact was made for the very early GCC integration and for the Linux port (people often forget D was Windows only for quite some time early on!)

The backend I think was made source-available around 2010. I know it was by 2012 (I downloaded 1.70 to prove it) but not sure exactly when it came out.

On Tuesday, 6 February 2018 at 03:07:02 UTC, rikki cattermole wrote:
> On 05/02/2018 5:07 PM, Ali wrote:
>> On Saturday, 3 February 2018 at 15:47:59 UTC, Ali wrote:
>>
>> Some people had the impression that D started as a closed source project( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16270937 )
>> I believe this proves this perception wrong
>
> The comment is correct, dmd was indeed closed source for a good number of years.
>
> I believe it was Brad (from my hazy memory) who when joined got it opened up (and had the bug tracker installed too).

yes, but, it seem it was closed source for pragmatic reasons, reusing the symantec C++ back-end assets, not because it was started as a closed source commercial language

like say eiffel