First off, I'm not a copyright lawyer, so my legal opinions are lay.

Secondly, every time D gets mentioned publicly, such as on reddit, someone posts that they won't use D because there are "two standard libraries" and "when will D get its act together." This situation is deplorable.

Thirdly, I understand that Tango has upwards of 50 developers, and they do not speak with one voice. When I say "Tango representative", it is not how he describes himself, except that he has been asked to speak to me on behalf of some, I don't know how many, Tango developers. When I say "Tango team", I mean the opinion as I interpreted it from the Tango representative.

Sadly, I do not have an identic memory, so I'll just do the best I can to recall our conversation.

I received a call from the Tango representative yesterday saying that some developers expressed concern that SHOO's time library proposed submission to Phobos may have an "infraction" of the Tango BSD license. The word "infringement" was not used, though I think infraction and infringement mean the same thing here.

He expressed the idea that since SHOO was admittedly very familiar with the Tango time code, that it was not possible for his time code to be free of "taint" from the corresponding Tango code. He was satisfied only by my agreement to block the inclusion of SHOO's time module in Phobos.

The key point here is the Tango team regards it as impossible for someone familiar with the internals of a Tango module to make a non-infringing reimplementation of its interface.

The discussion next turned to what can be done about it. One possibility was for Phobos to include modules from Tango under the BSD license. That is certainly allowed. The problem then is that, since Phobos modules all tend to willy-nilly import each other, any use of Phobos will require conformance to the BSD binary attribution requirement. I regard this as an unnecessary and unacceptable impediment to the adoption of D. That's fine for other libraries, but the *standard* library shouldn't be so encumbered.

Yes, I know Google has embraced BSD, but Google can afford to spend a billion dollars in legal fees defending their interests. We can't.

On the other hand, wholesale inclusion of Phobos modules into Tango under the Boost license will impose zero additional requirements upon users of Tango. It is not a symmetric problem. This is why I proposed moving Tango towards the Boost license.

I wholly understand that it is impractical to move the entire Tango codebase to Boost because some of the developers are not contactable. But, it is entirely possible for new modules to be done using Boost, and for existing modules where the developers can be located to be relicensed to Boost.

The Tango representative said this was proposed, and there were some reservations:

1. Since we changed the Phobos license to Boost, we might change it again and pull the rug out from under Tango.

The Phobos 1 license was, and remains, a mishmash of Public Domain and various homemade open source licenses. This was not acceptable for professional use, and we settled on Boost as the most liberal of the accepted open source licenses for Phobos 2. It would take nothing short of a catastrophe, like the courts declaring the Boost license to be invalid, to get us to change it again.


2. Tango having 2 licenses for different parts will confuse people.

This is a reasonable concern. My answer is that we can handle such confusion, as both BSD and Boost licenses are simple and well known. It's a lot better than the current situation.


3. The Boost license is "viral".

I think this concern is unfounded.


4. There were some other unspecified reservations.

I invite any that have such reservations to call me off the record on Skype. My Skype handle is walter.bright


The only other possibility Tango and Phobos can work together is for individual Tango developers to relicense their own code to Boost and put it into Phobos. This has happened, for example, with Sean and Don's code.

I reiterate my general and blanket policy of allowing any Tango developers to use any part of Phobos I've written for Tango and relicense it as necessary to do so. I have not received any reciprocal agreement from the Tango team, though I would welcome it.

If I have misstated, misrepresented, or misinterpreted anything, I welcome any corrections.

If anyone would like to go on the record about these issues, please post here. If anyone wants to go off the record and talk with me directly, I'm available on Skype.

I believe both sides of this have the same goal, the furtherment of D, and want an amicable resolution. I promise to do everything I can to make that happen.

It is my understanding that several Tango developers no longer follow digitalmars.D. I recommend posting to the Tango forums.

I have been assuming the path of least resistance for D2 Tango was for Tango to replace a few components with their druntime equivalent. That would allow Tango and Phobos to be installed side by side with no legal problems. Those that use tango.xxx would have to conform to the BSD license requirements and those that don't wouldn't.  Providing two alternatives which are mutually compatible is already a huge step forward from the state of D1.

Maybe D2 Tango Would one day remove a few modules and use the Phobos equivalent, or convert some modules to boost license, etc... Those things are not nearly as important and could be done later. My understanding is that Tango is kept modular with minimal interdependencies. That should make those kinds of changes fairly easy.

Walter Bright Wrote:

> First off, I'm not a copyright lawyer, so my legal opinions are lay.
> 
> Secondly, every time D gets mentioned publicly, such as on reddit, someone posts that they won't use D because there are "two standard libraries" and "when will D get its act together." This situation is deplorable.
> 
> Thirdly, I understand that Tango has upwards of 50 developers, and they do not speak with one voice. When I say "Tango representative", it is not how he describes himself, except that he has been asked to speak to me on behalf of some, I don't know how many, Tango developers. When I say "Tango team", I mean the opinion as I interpreted it from the Tango representative.
> 
> Sadly, I do not have an identic memory, so I'll just do the best I can to recall our conversation.
> 
> I received a call from the Tango representative yesterday saying that some developers expressed concern that SHOO's time library proposed submission to Phobos may have an "infraction" of the Tango BSD license. The word "infringement" was not used, though I think infraction and infringement mean the same thing here.
> 
> He expressed the idea that since SHOO was admittedly very familiar with the Tango time code, that it was not possible for his time code to be free of "taint" from the corresponding Tango code. He was satisfied only by my agreement to block the inclusion of SHOO's time module in Phobos.
> 
> The key point here is the Tango team regards it as impossible for someone familiar with the internals of a Tango module to make a non-infringing reimplementation of its interface.
> 
> The discussion next turned to what can be done about it. One possibility was for Phobos to include modules from Tango under the BSD license. That is certainly allowed. The problem then is that, since Phobos modules all tend to willy-nilly import each other, any use of Phobos will require conformance to the BSD binary attribution requirement. I regard this as an unnecessary and unacceptable impediment to the adoption of D. That's fine for other libraries, but the *standard* library shouldn't be so encumbered.
> 
> Yes, I know Google has embraced BSD, but Google can afford to spend a billion dollars in legal fees defending their interests. We can't.
> 
> On the other hand, wholesale inclusion of Phobos modules into Tango under the Boost license will impose zero additional requirements upon users of Tango. It is not a symmetric problem. This is why I proposed moving Tango towards the Boost license.
> 
> I wholly understand that it is impractical to move the entire Tango codebase to Boost because some of the developers are not contactable. But, it is entirely possible for new modules to be done using Boost, and for existing modules where the developers can be located to be relicensed to Boost.
> 
> The Tango representative said this was proposed, and there were some reservations:
> 
> 1. Since we changed the Phobos license to Boost, we might change it again and pull the rug out from under Tango.
> 
> The Phobos 1 license was, and remains, a mishmash of Public Domain and various homemade open source licenses. This was not acceptable for professional use, and we settled on Boost as the most liberal of the accepted open source licenses for Phobos 2. It would take nothing short of a catastrophe, like the courts declaring the Boost license to be invalid, to get us to change it again.
> 
> 
> 2. Tango having 2 licenses for different parts will confuse people.
> 
> This is a reasonable concern. My answer is that we can handle such confusion, as both BSD and Boost licenses are simple and well known. It's a lot better than the current situation.
> 
> 
> 3. The Boost license is "viral".
> 
> I think this concern is unfounded.
> 
> 
> 4. There were some other unspecified reservations.
> 
> I invite any that have such reservations to call me off the record on Skype. My Skype handle is walter.bright
> 
> 
> The only other possibility Tango and Phobos can work together is for individual Tango developers to relicense their own code to Boost and put it into Phobos. This has happened, for example, with Sean and Don's code.
> 
> I reiterate my general and blanket policy of allowing any Tango developers to use any part of Phobos I've written for Tango and relicense it as necessary to do so. I have not received any reciprocal agreement from the Tango team, though I would welcome it.
> 
> If I have misstated, misrepresented, or misinterpreted anything, I welcome any corrections.
> 
> If anyone would like to go on the record about these issues, please post here. If anyone wants to go off the record and talk with me directly, I'm available on Skype.
> 
> I believe both sides of this have the same goal, the furtherment of D, and want an amicable resolution. I promise to do everything I can to make that happen.

"Walter Bright" <newshound1@digitalmars.com> wrote in message news:hrfn8q$262p$1@digitalmars.com...
>
> 2. Tango having 2 licenses for different parts will confuse people.
>
> This is a reasonable concern. My answer is that we can handle such confusion, as both BSD and Boost licenses are simple and well known. It's a lot better than the current situation.
>

I applaud Walter's whole post here, and would like to especially emphasize my strong agreement on this point in particular. It's absolutely better than the current state, and although I'm neither a member of the Phobos team nor the Tango team (nor a lawyer for that matter), after carefully reading all of the discussion, every side, it is my firm belief that this is the best, surest, clearest path towards solving the whole issue once and for all. I'll explain my thoughts:

It is my understanding, and correct me if I'm wrong, that most of Tango has been cleared by the respective developers for whatever license change is decided. The remaining parts can be clearly labeled in the documentation and source as being "currently under BSD due to an inability to either contact or obtain permission from the author" (or something to that effect, but more thought out than my off-the-top-of-my-head example there). Yes, this *is* a bit inconvenient for both Tango devs and Tango users, *however*, unlike all other suggestions I've seen (I certainly don't intend to badmouth those suggestions, though), it provides a real starting point for a clear path out of the whole mess once-and-for-all: Those "BSD" portions can eventually be phased-out and/or slowly replaced, or with luck, maybe a few of the remaining authors can be contacted/persuaded, and meanwhile, the rest of the D/Phobos/Tango worlds can move on.

Again, yes, it would be a pain for everyone, but every other approach seems to be a pain too, if not plain unrealistic. The biggest pain of all, of course, and the longest-lasting pain, would be allowing things to continue in the direction they've been going.

Although I'm not really a Tango dev, I have submitted small patches of code in tickets to Tango that did get included, and I've made a few changes to the Wiki. I seriously doubt any of that has been significant enough to qualify me as a developer that would need to give any permission, especially since I've never noticed any request for permission coming my way. But just in case I'm wrong, and maybe there was an email mixup somewhere, anyone can consider this to be my official permission for Tango (or Phobos, for that matter, everyone else willing) to do anything it wants with anything I've submitted (My DSource/Tango username is "Abscissa"). If anything else is needed my email username is "nick1" and the domain is semitwist.com. If there's a problem with that I also have a gmail account named "semitwist".

Nick Sabalausky wrote:
> Although I'm not really a Tango dev, I have submitted small patches of code in tickets to Tango that did get included, and I've made a few changes to the Wiki. I seriously doubt any of that has been significant enough to qualify me as a developer that would need to give any permission, especially since I've never noticed any request for permission coming my way. But just in case I'm wrong, and maybe there was an email mixup somewhere, anyone can consider this to be my official permission for Tango (or Phobos, for that matter, everyone else willing) to do anything it wants with anything I've submitted (My DSource/Tango username is "Abscissa"). If anything else is needed my email username is "nick1" and the domain is semitwist.com. If there's a problem with that I also have a gmail account named "semitwist".

Thank you, Nick! This is a great start.

Jason House wrote:
> It is my understanding that several Tango developers no longer follow
> digitalmars.D. I recommend posting to the Tango forums.

If anyone would like to repost my message initiating this thread in the Tango forums, feel free.

"Walter Bright" <newshound1@digitalmars.com> wrote in message news:hrgag4$cp2$2@digitalmars.com...
> Jason House wrote:
>> It is my understanding that several Tango developers no longer follow digitalmars.D. I recommend posting to the Tango forums.
>
> If anyone would like to repost my message initiating this thread in the Tango forums, feel free.

Done: http://www.dsource.org/projects/tango/forums/topic/878

On 30/04/10 23:57, Walter Bright wrote:
> 2. Tango having 2 licenses for different parts will confuse people.

Actually, it would be 3 licenses, as tango is currently dual-licensed.

> 4. There were some other unspecified reservations.

I believe one of these was that gradually transitioning to boost would be a huge administrative task, and would really slow down the development of Tango, as the developers would be busy sorting out license issues rather than coding. I think the solution to this would be to find a 3rd party who is willing to make the transition for them, so they can keep coding and the 3rd party can chase up people and get their permission. Of course for this to happen the lead Tango devs would need to agree to a move to boost, something I hope they have the sense to consider, as it does look like the right path to take to sort out this issue once and for all.

> The only other possibility Tango and Phobos can work together is for
> individual Tango developers to relicense their own code to Boost and put
> it into Phobos. This has happened, for example, with Sean and Don's code.

I think this is where we are currently. The issue arises when the developers for certain code can't be found, or don't want to re-license. This will invariable cause the whole situation to arise again when someone decides to make a new module, and it ends up having a similar interface to the Tango code for example. I believe the only way forward from Phobos' point of view is to use C/C++ libraries with compatible licenses as a base rather than Tango, this is unless Tango transitions to Boost.

> I reiterate my general and blanket policy of allowing any Tango
> developers to use any part of Phobos I've written for Tango and
> relicense it as necessary to do so. I have not received any reciprocal
> agreement from the Tango team, though I would welcome it.

I don't think this will happen given the 50+ contributors. This said, if Tango transitions to boost, you won't need their explicit permission to move code into phobos, providing the license stays in tact.

> I believe both sides of this have the same goal, the furtherment of D,
> and want an amicable resolution. I promise to do everything I can to
> make that happen.

It's a shame we're all fighting for the same thing, yet the community is becoming split over politics...

--
Robert

== Quote from Walter Bright (newshound1@digitalmars.com)'s article
> I received a call from the Tango representative yesterday saying that some
> developers expressed concern that SHOO's time library proposed submission to
> Phobos may have an "infraction" of the Tango BSD license. The word
> "infringement" was not used, though I think infraction and infringement mean the
> same thing here.
> He expressed the idea that since SHOO was admittedly very familiar with the
> Tango time code, that it was not possible for his time code to be free of
> "taint" from the corresponding Tango code. He was satisfied only by my agreement
> to block the inclusion of SHOO's time module in Phobos.
> The key point here is the Tango team regards it as impossible for someone
> familiar with the internals of a Tango module to make a non-infringing
> reimplementation of its interface.

This is worse than I imagined. So they were the bad guys all alone. Lars Ivar & comp.- shame on you for this crap. The hell with Tango. It needs to die with D1.

--
Gurney Halleck

For those Tango programmers not willing to change their license:

They are fucking programmer prima donnas. Tango should prune their work and continue on without them. Too much good work is at hold because of legal bombs they planted. Their contribution is clearly useless, even more, harmful.

As for those that can't be reached: hey, either adopt it as anonymous work or prune it too.

That's what Stalin would do.

== Quote from Walter Bright (newshound1@digitalmars.com)'s article
> First off, I'm not a copyright lawyer, so my legal opinions are lay.
> Secondly, every time D gets mentioned publicly, such as on reddit, someone posts
> that they won't use D because there are "two standard libraries" and "when will
> D get its act together." This situation is deplorable.
> Thirdly, I understand that Tango has upwards of 50 developers, and they do not
> speak with one voice. When I say "Tango representative", it is not how he
> describes himself, except that he has been asked to speak to me on behalf of
> some, I don't know how many, Tango developers. When I say "Tango team", I mean
> the opinion as I interpreted it from the Tango representative.
> Sadly, I do not have an identic memory, so I'll just do the best I can to recall
> our conversation.
> I received a call from the Tango representative yesterday saying that some
> developers expressed concern that SHOO's time library proposed submission to
> Phobos may have an "infraction" of the Tango BSD license. The word
> "infringement" was not used, though I think infraction and infringement mean the
> same thing here.
> He expressed the idea that since SHOO was admittedly very familiar with the
> Tango time code, that it was not possible for his time code to be free of
> "taint" from the corresponding Tango code. He was satisfied only by my agreement
> to block the inclusion of SHOO's time module in Phobos.
> The key point here is the Tango team regards it as impossible for someone
> familiar with the internals of a Tango module to make a non-infringing
> reimplementation of its interface.
> The discussion next turned to what can be done about it. One possibility was for
> Phobos to include modules from Tango under the BSD license. That is certainly
> allowed. The problem then is that, since Phobos modules all tend to willy-nilly
> import each other, any use of Phobos will require conformance to the BSD binary
> attribution requirement. I regard this as an unnecessary and unacceptable
> impediment to the adoption of D. That's fine for other libraries, but the
> *standard* library shouldn't be so encumbered.
> Yes, I know Google has embraced BSD, but Google can afford to spend a billion
> dollars in legal fees defending their interests. We can't.
> On the other hand, wholesale inclusion of Phobos modules into Tango under the
> Boost license will impose zero additional requirements upon users of Tango. It
> is not a symmetric problem. This is why I proposed moving Tango towards the
> Boost license.
> I wholly understand that it is impractical to move the entire Tango codebase to
> Boost because some of the developers are not contactable. But, it is entirely
> possible for new modules to be done using Boost, and for existing modules where
> the developers can be located to be relicensed to Boost.
> The Tango representative said this was proposed, and there were some reservations:
> 1. Since we changed the Phobos license to Boost, we might change it again and
> pull the rug out from under Tango.
> The Phobos 1 license was, and remains, a mishmash of Public Domain and various
> homemade open source licenses. This was not acceptable for professional use, and
> we settled on Boost as the most liberal of the accepted open source licenses for
> Phobos 2. It would take nothing short of a catastrophe, like the courts
> declaring the Boost license to be invalid, to get us to change it again.
> 2. Tango having 2 licenses for different parts will confuse people.
> This is a reasonable concern. My answer is that we can handle such confusion, as
> both BSD and Boost licenses are simple and well known. It's a lot better than
> the current situation.
> 3. The Boost license is "viral".
> I think this concern is unfounded.
> 4. There were some other unspecified reservations.
> I invite any that have such reservations to call me off the record on Skype. My
> Skype handle is walter.bright
> The only other possibility Tango and Phobos can work together is for individual
> Tango developers to relicense their own code to Boost and put it into Phobos.
> This has happened, for example, with Sean and Don's code.
> I reiterate my general and blanket policy of allowing any Tango developers to
> use any part of Phobos I've written for Tango and relicense it as necessary to
> do so. I have not received any reciprocal agreement from the Tango team, though
> I would welcome it.
> If I have misstated, misrepresented, or misinterpreted anything, I welcome any
> corrections.
> If anyone would like to go on the record about these issues, please post here.
> If anyone wants to go off the record and talk with me directly, I'm available on
> Skype.
> I believe both sides of this have the same goal, the furtherment of D, and want
> an amicable resolution. I promise to do everything I can to make that happen.

Adapted from http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.d.phobos/359

I wish to clear the air somewhat regarding this topic.

I mostly feel like saying "Aaaarghh, you all got it wrong!", but I'll rather try to explain my (and thus to some degree Tango's) stance.

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Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.

Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.

--
Lars Ivar Douchegesund