On Tuesday, 20 May 2014 at 22:50:45 UTC, John Colvin wrote:
> On Tuesday, 20 May 2014 at 20:44:57 UTC, Andre wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> I like D due to its clear syntax and power. For a business application developer what is really missing is a full blown IDE which enables
>> Rapid Application Development.
>> => GUI
>> => Database
>> => Internet components
>> => Refactoring
>> => ... and a lot things more
>>
>> If I compare the time I need to develop a D application and a delphi
>> application there are several weeks between unfortunatelly
>> (my experience).
>>
>> I wonder whether it is possible from a license point of view to
>> develop an IDE for D and sell it? Of course there are license issues
>> due to fact that D must be integrated in the package but someone would
>> only pay for the IDE.
>> On the other side, a good IDE will mass enabled D for business application developer.
>>
>> If someone will create an IDE for D like Borland has done for Delphi
>> this would lead to an huge success for D in my opinion.
>>
>> What do you think? Would you appreciate such an IDE?
>>
>> Kind regards
>> André
>
> What licensing problems do you foresee? Bear in the mind that although the dmd backend has a restrictive licence that prohibits redistribution without permission, permission to redistribute is normally easy to get from Walter. Alternatively, if the clients computer does the download of dmd from dlang.org as part of the IDE installer then you circumvent the problem entirely.
>
> To the best of my (limited) knowledge, the open source licenses used in all 3 main compilers do not prohibit redistribution and/or selling for profit.

Also, note that linking to GPL licenced shared libraries/dlls/dylibs or whatever you use doesn't necessarily mean the GPL has got you wrapped in it's rather fuzzy web.  AKAIK it's a matter of debate and has never been tested in court, but it's enough for many current creators/distributors of closed source software for linux who call various GPL system libs via the shared library interfaces.


Also - and this is the biggest thing that people fail to realise in all software license debates - it is a practical impossibility to create a software license that is well defined and valid in all jurisdictions. For a global enterprise, almost *everything* is legally fuzzy.

On Wednesday, 21 May 2014 at 09:17:34 UTC, Ola Fosheim Grøstad wrote:
> You can modify a GPL'ed compiler to work as a stand alone server with shared memory interface. You are allowed to distribute it as a binary with other kinds of software. You don't have to make source available unless the receiver of the binary explicitly requests it, and only for the GPL'ed server.
I don't know about that last point, and I'm not about to reread the GPL to find out, but sure, it's all a matter of how tightly you link against GPL code.

On Wednesday, 21 May 2014 at 09:25:56 UTC, Jacob Carlborg wrote:
> On 21/05/14 09:50, Joakim wrote:
>
>> Yes, but they moved to the UIUC-licensed (basically the BSD
>> license) llvm eventually, partially because they wanted Xcode to
>> directly link against it.  I think it's that kind of integration
>> that Andre and Max have in mind, though as John noted, they're
>> not particularly precise about what they want.
>
> That's a completely different thing. I would like to see someone try doing that with DMD ;). I assume they didn't want to do that since that feels quite unrealistic at this stage, DMD is not really meant for this type of integration.
I don't think they know that. ;)

On Wednesday, 21 May 2014 at 09:59:54 UTC, Max Barraclough wrote:
> On Wednesday, 21 May 2014 at 07:50:33 UTC, Joakim wrote:
>> I'd hope not. ;)
>
> Other than the Artistic Licence dual-licensing, what did I get wrong?
Well, that's a pretty fundamental point, but it was a joke.  See the wink? :)

On Wednesday, 21 May 2014 at 10:02:31 UTC, John Colvin wrote:
> Also, note that linking to GPL licenced shared libraries/dlls/dylibs or whatever you use doesn't necessarily mean the GPL has got you wrapped in it's rather fuzzy web.  AKAIK it's a matter of debate and has never been tested in court, but it's enough for many current creators/distributors of closed source software for linux who call various GPL system libs via the shared library interfaces.
And constantly in flux, see the recent court decision that claimed that Google's use of Java APIs in Android infringed on Oracle's "copyright" on them:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/05/dangerous-ruling-oracle-v-google-federal-circuit-reverses-sensible-lower-court

> Also - and this is the biggest thing that people fail to realise in all software license debates - it is a practical impossibility to create a software license that is well defined and valid in all jurisdictions. For a global enterprise, almost *everything* is legally fuzzy.
It is true that widely varying copyright laws all over the world make it difficult for more ambitious licenses like the GPL to be written, as opposed to simpler licenses like BSD, but it is also true that many of those OSS licenses are badly written even for the one jurisdiction they were written in.  The Artistic license has taken a lot of flak for this over the years, same with parts of the GPL.

On Wednesday, 21 May 2014 at 10:52:34 UTC, Joakim wrote:
>> Other than the Artistic Licence dual-licensing, what did I get wrong?
> Well, that's a pretty fundamental point, but it was a joke.

I think you're right - I'm not all that familiar with the Artistic Licence, but it seems a better fit for building a proprietary IDE around DMD.


From this unreliable source, it looks like the Artistic Licence (at least Version 2.0, though I presume 1.0 is in the same spirit) is intended to be proprietary-friendly, so the GPL discussion is for naught: http://osdir.com/ml/licenses.open-source.general/2007-03/msg00055.html

DMD seems to reference 'Version 1.0' of the Artistic Licence, which the FSF consider to be too vague to really reason about:
https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#ArtisticLicense

On 21/05/14 11:59, Max Barraclough wrote:

> I assumed we were talking about using the frontend as a means to enable
> syntax-highlighting and such, rather than simple invocation of the DMD
> compiler, which of course wouldn't be a problem.

I assumed we weren't, since it's not really made for that. It would take a lot of work to make DMD useable as a library.

> XCode uses its own C/C++/Objective-C/Objective-C++ parser then, I take it?

Yes, now days it uses libclang. It still compiles the code by invoking the compiler in an external process. Which could be GCC or Clang.

-- 
/Jacob Carlborg

On 21/05/14 12:02, John Colvin wrote:

> Also, note that linking to GPL licenced shared libraries/dlls/dylibs or
> whatever you use doesn't necessarily mean the GPL has got you wrapped in
> it's rather fuzzy web.  AKAIK it's a matter of debate and has never been
> tested in court

As far as I know, if you link dynamically with a GPL library you're library/application need to be GPL as well. That's why LGPL exists, where it's allowed.

> , but it's enough for many current creators/distributors
> of closed source software for linux who call various GPL system libs via
> the shared library interfaces.

GPL (and LGPL) has a exception for linking with system libraries.

-- 
/Jacob Carlborg

On Wednesday, 21 May 2014 at 10:52:34 UTC, Joakim wrote:
> I don't know about that last point, and I'm not about to reread the GPL to find out, but sure, it's all a matter of how tightly you link against GPL code.

Shared memory, pipelines etc are not linking… If you exchange data you are ok as they are independent works.

On Wednesday, 21 May 2014 at 09:59:54 UTC, Max Barraclough wrote:
> Other than the Artistic Licence dual-licensing, what did I get wrong?

Syntax highlighting requires only minimal lexer. Code completion should be done out of process in order to easily restart it if it overuses memory.

To be back on topic :

What about trying crowdfunding to pay a few developers to build an IDE for D ?
What about Digital Mars doing it ?
Where is the video with Walter and Andrei asking for contributions ?

On Thursday, 22 May 2014 at 09:51:17 UTC, marcpmichel wrote:
> To be back on topic :
>
> What about trying crowdfunding to pay a few developers to build an IDE for D ?
> What about Digital Mars doing it ?
> Where is the video with Walter and Andrei asking for contributions ?

The MonoD developer is accepting donations:
http://mono-d.alexanderbothe.com/

(Unrelated: The JavaScript-free captcha is utterly impossible, or else actually broken. Most annoying.)

On Thursday, 22 May 2014 at 14:06:10 UTC, Max Barraclough wrote:
>
> The MonoD developer is accepting donations:
> http://mono-d.alexanderbothe.com/

I my mind, such a crowdfunded IDE for D, announced by Walter and
Andrei, should be written in D.
It could be the necessary bootstrap for such a big open-sourced
project.
This, indirectly, would also serve as advertisement for D.