On Thursday, 27 June 2013 at 03:20:37 UTC, Mathias Lang wrote:
I've read (almost), everything, so I hope I won't miss a point
here:
a) I've heard about MSVC, Red Hat, Qt, Linux and so on. From my
understanding, none of the projects mentionned have gone from
free (as in
free beer) to hybrid/closed. And I'm not currently able to
think of one
successful, widespread project that did.
Then you are not paying attention. As I've already noted several
times, Visual Studio, which is the way most use MSVC, has both
paid and free versions. Red Hat contains binary blobs and
possibly other non-OSS software and charges companies for
consulting and support. Qt is an "open core" project that is
dual-licensed under both OSS and commercial licenses, the latter
of which you pay for. Linux contains binary blobs in the vast
majority of installs and most people running it paid for it.
If your implied point is that the original authors aren't the
ones taking the project hybrid or paid, it depends on the
license. Sometimes it is those owning the original copyright, as
it had to be in the Qt, MySQL, and other dual-licensing cases,
other times it isn't.
b) Thinking that being free (as a beer and/or as freedom),
hybrid, closed
source of whatever is a single critera of success seems
foolish. I'm not
asking for a complete comparison (I think my mailbox won't
stand it ;-) ),
but please stop comparing a free operating software with a paid
compiler,
and assume the former have more users than the later because
it's free (and
vice-versa). In addition, I don't see the logic behind
comparing something
born in the 90s with something from the 2000s. Remember the
Dot-com bubble ?
Obviously nothing is a "single criteria of success," as has been
stated already. In complex social fields like business or
technology ventures, where there are many confounding factors,
judgement and interpretation are everything.
By your rationale, we might as well do _anything_ because how
could we possibly know that C++ wasn't immensely successful only
because Bjarne Stroustrup is a Dane? Obviously none of this
discussion matters, as D has very little Danish involvement and
therefore can never be as popular. ;)
You have to have the insight to be able to weigh all these
competing factors and while I agree that most cannot, those who
are successful do.
d) People pay for something they need. They don't adopt
something because
they can pay for it. That's why paid compiler must follow
language
promotion, not the other way around.
These assertions are somewhat meaningless. Those who value
performance will pay for the optimized version of the dmd
compiler that I've proposed. Those who don't will use the
slower, pure-OSS version. There is no reason for a paid compiler
to only follow promotion, both must be done at the same time.
In any case, I've lost interest in this debate. I've made my
case, those involved with the D compiler can decide if this would
be a worthwhile direction. From their silence so far, I can only
assume that they are not interested in rousing the ire of the
freetards and will simply maintain the status quo of keeping all
source public.
This will lead to D's growth being slowed, compared to the
alternative of providing a paid compiler also. That's their
choice to make.
If somebody stumbles across this thread later, perhaps they will
close up optimization patches to ldc and sell a paid version.
Given that those behind dmd have not expressed any interest in a
paid version, maybe these ldc vendors will not involve them with
the money or feature decisions of their paid ldc. It would be
likely that this paid compiler becomes the dominant one and the
original dmd project is forgotten.
If you don't choose the best approach, a hybrid model, you leave
it open for somebody else to do it and take the project in a
different direction.
