Tell!

On Saturday 29 January 2011 21:41:28 Jack wrote:
> Tell!

No trolling please.

D is a programming language. There's nothing about D which would be for profit or not for profit. You don't sell a programming language.

The compilers could be for profit if they were sold, but they aren't. All of them are open source, with the only snag being that the license for dmd's backend is such that you can see the source but not copy it and change it and whatnot. The frontend is entirely open source however, and both gdc and LDC are entirely open source. Regardless, they're all free to download and use.

You can probably buy enterprise support for dmd from Digital Mars like you can with dmc, but I don't know anything about that, and that's buying support not software.

It really doesn't make sense to ask whether D is for profit or not. Programming languages aren't for profit. Their tools may be, but you don't buy or rent programming languages, so asking whether D is for profit or not really doesn't make any sense.

- Jonathan M Davis

On 01/30/2011 12:56 AM, Jonathan M Davis wrote:
> On Saturday 29 January 2011 21:41:28 Jack wrote:
>> Tell!
>
> No trolling please.

It's a legitimate question, one that's been asked many times, and one that I've never seen Walter answer. Instead, we have people who fill in answers for him.

I think it would make people more comfortable to know what Walter thinks with regard to D and money. Is he in it for money? If so, how does he plan to make it?

There's nothing wrong with being in it for money, but it would be nice to know up front and in what manner.

> D is a programming language. There's nothing about D which would be for profit or
> not for profit. You don't sell a programming language.

Tell Google that programming languages aren't sold. They're being sued by Oracle for essentially implementing Java. One of the big reasons Oracle bought Sun was to get Java.

Jeff Nowakowski Wrote:

> There's nothing wrong with being in it for money, but it would be nice to know up front and in what manner.


I've been meaning to ask, and I'll just take this oppurtunity, and it relates to what Jeff just said:

If one would like to donate money to D, how would one do that? Would it even make any sense? Or be needed?

And this naturally raises the question: Who/what owns D? Is it a non-profit, a group of people, or a business? And regardless of who owns D, is there any D-only organisation that one could support, financially? I'm not demanding an answer, I'm just sharing my thoughts.

I mean, it would feel weird to donate money to Digital Mars, a for-profit company, that does all kinds of things, including C++, right? If I was to feel confident in donating it would have to be to some sort of formally founded non-profit legal body with some sort of constitution like "to further the development of D" or something. I don't know how these things work. I guess right now D is too small and the legal cost of just maintaining such an organisation would surpass any donations anyway.


BR
/HF

Sun, 30 Jan 2011 09:06:57 -0500, Heywood Floyd wrote:

> Jeff Nowakowski Wrote:
> 
>> There's nothing wrong with being in it for money, but it would be nice to know up front and in what manner.
> 
> 
> I've been meaning to ask, and I'll just take this oppurtunity, and it relates to what Jeff just said:
> 
> If one would like to donate money to D, how would one do that? Would it even make any sense? Or be needed?
> 
> And this naturally raises the question: Who/what owns D? Is it a non-profit, a group of people, or a business? And regardless of who owns D, is there any D-only organisation that one could support, financially? I'm not demanding an answer, I'm just sharing my thoughts.
> 
> I mean, it would feel weird to donate money to Digital Mars, a for-profit company, that does all kinds of things, including C++, right? If I was to feel confident in donating it would have to be to some sort of formally founded non-profit legal body with some sort of constitution like "to further the development of D" or something. I don't know how these things work. I guess right now D is too small and the legal cost of just maintaining such an organisation would surpass any donations anyway.

D is basically Walter's language. He decides what goes in and how stuff works. People who live nearby are somewhat able to influence the process.

So far it doesn't look like any earmarked money has been used to buy specific features. For example I doubt that even if you donate one million USD, they won't rename the keywords or __traits into something readable or add built-in first class tuples. I also doubt you can make the dmc/dmd backend FOSS with any sum of money. If you wanted some changes badly, I'd recommend donating the money to some democratic community language without any BDFL persons.

I once saw that money has been used to support dsource / tango development. Phobos OTOH is Andrei's child. I bet he earns at least $20000 per month at facebook so you would need to be extremely rich to persuade him or give something useful in return such as free time.

> If one would like to donate money to D, how would one do that?
> Would it even make any sense? Or be needed?

I still think something like Google Summer of Code would help the most.
But I guess a task like "fix bugs in the dmd frontend" won't be accepted :(

On 01/30/2011 08:06 AM, Heywood Floyd wrote:
> Jeff Nowakowski Wrote:
>
>> There's nothing wrong with being in it for money, but it would be
>> nice to know up front and in what manner.
>
>
> I've been meaning to ask, and I'll just take this oppurtunity, and it
> relates to what Jeff just said:
>
> If one would like to donate money to D, how would one do that? Would
> it even make any sense? Or be needed?
>
> And this naturally raises the question: Who/what owns D? Is it a
> non-profit, a group of people, or a business? And regardless of who
> owns D, is there any D-only organisation that one could support,
> financially? I'm not demanding an answer, I'm just sharing my
> thoughts.
>
> I mean, it would feel weird to donate money to Digital Mars, a
> for-profit company, that does all kinds of things, including C++,
> right? If I was to feel confident in donating it would have to be to
> some sort of formally founded non-profit legal body with some sort of
> constitution like "to further the development of D" or something. I
> don't know how these things work. I guess right now D is too small
> and the legal cost of just maintaining such an organisation would
> surpass any donations anyway.
>
>
> BR /HF

The best thing for D would be if a large company with a FOSS presence would use it. That means people would be implicitly paid for using and contributing to D. It would also instil confidence in other companies to use the language.

Beyond that, there is this site (I forgot the name) that allows people to offer and ask money for certain projects. I guess that would be a way to fund D projects.


Andrei

On 01/30/2011 08:27 AM, retard wrote:
> Sun, 30 Jan 2011 09:06:57 -0500, Heywood Floyd wrote:
>
>> Jeff Nowakowski Wrote:
>>
>>> There's nothing wrong with being in it for money, but it would be nice
>>> to know up front and in what manner.
>>
>>
>> I've been meaning to ask, and I'll just take this oppurtunity, and it
>> relates to what Jeff just said:
>>
>> If one would like to donate money to D, how would one do that? Would it
>> even make any sense? Or be needed?
>>
>> And this naturally raises the question: Who/what owns D? Is it a
>> non-profit, a group of people, or a business? And regardless of who owns
>> D, is there any D-only organisation that one could support, financially?
>> I'm not demanding an answer, I'm just sharing my thoughts.
>>
>> I mean, it would feel weird to donate money to Digital Mars, a
>> for-profit company, that does all kinds of things, including C++, right?
>> If I was to feel confident in donating it would have to be to some sort
>> of formally founded non-profit legal body with some sort of constitution
>> like "to further the development of D" or something. I don't know how
>> these things work. I guess right now D is too small and the legal cost
>> of just maintaining such an organisation would surpass any donations
>> anyway.
>
> D is basically Walter's language. He decides what goes in and how stuff
> works. People who live nearby are somewhat able to influence the process.

This is a meritocracy: people who are good will exert an influence on the language and its standard library. Don is an incredibly strong contributor and he's living in Europe; I've only seen him once in my life. If Don had language design as a focus, I'm sure he would very strongly influence the definition of the language. This is because he is talented, competent, and motivated. Steve is in New York City. I don't know where other strong contributors are, but definitely they help shape the language.

> So far it doesn't look like any earmarked money has been used to buy
> specific features. For example I doubt that even if you donate one
> million USD, they won't rename the keywords or __traits into something
> readable or add built-in first class tuples.

That would take someone rich and incredibly petty. It's not, however, impossible that a corporation would seriously consider adoption of the language but would have a specific need that needs be met as a prerequisite. Such things happened with things like ABIs, interfacing with other languages and systems, specific libraries, certain optimizations etc.

> I also doubt you can make
> the dmc/dmd backend FOSS with any sum of money. If you wanted some
> changes badly, I'd recommend donating the money to some democratic
> community language without any BDFL persons.

I think that's just false. With money the backend could be bought from Symantec.


Andrei

"Jonathan M Davis" <jmdavisProg@gmx.com> a écrit

Why are you trying to change the meaning of Open Source ?

Open Source comes with principles. It comes with a spirit. It about freedom.
It's about *freely* sharing knowledge, tools, ...
It does not come for more rights for the one who started distributing the
knowledge.

AFAIK, D is not a trademarked language. So everybody can produce a compiler for it.

DMD is Digital Mars D. The Digital Mars implementation of D. Digital Mars is the vendor of this compiler.



See:



enum Vendor; Master list of D compiler vendors.


  DigitalMars Digital Mars
  const Vendor vendor : Which vendor produced this compiler.

  DMD is not Open Source.

  The backend licence is not an open source license.

  There is zero souce code for snn.lib (which is a part of DMD).

  >
  > D is a programming language. There's nothing about D which would be for
profit or
  > not for profit. You don't sell a programming language.
  >
  > The compilers could be for profit if they were sold, but they aren't.
All of them
  > are open source, with the only snag being that the license for dmd's
backend is
  > such that you can see the source but not copy it and change it and
whatnot. The
  > frontend is entirely open source however, and both gdc and LDC are
entirely open
  > source. Regardless, they're all free to download and use.
  >
  > You can probably buy enterprise support for dmd from Digital Mars like
you can
  > with dmc, but I don't know anything about that, and that's buying
support not
  > software.
  >
  > It really doesn't make sense to ask whether D is for profit or not.

Yes it does.
Because one must look at the spirit. Not at the words.

When we talk about "D". We talk of the whole. It's not about the 4th letter of the alphabet.

Open Source community will glady help a truely Open Source Project. D has it's place there.

A lot of individuals has worked very very hard to get there place under the Sun. They are trying to create a world where there is collaboration and no competition.

Every body is welcomed to join the efforts.


> Programming languages aren't for profit. Their tools may be, but you don't buy or rent programming languages, so asking whether D is for profit or not really doesn't make any sense.
>
> - Jonathan M Davis

== Quote from Andrei Alexandrescu (SeeWebsiteForEmail@erdani.org)'s article
> Beyond that, there is this site (I forgot the name) that allows people
> to offer and ask money for certain projects. I guess that would be a way
> to fund D projects.
> Andrei

You mean http://flattr.com ?