On Sunday, 30 June 2013 at 09:34:14 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
On 6/29/2013 11:39 PM, Joakim wrote:
What do you think of my idea of segmenting the market though?
Keep providing a
free-as-in-beer dmd, like you are now, for the people who want
it, while Remedy
and others who want performance pay for a dmd that puts out
more performant
code, with those improvements slowly merged back into the free
dmd over time.
It won't work. Those days are gone.
I disagree. We'll find out.
If you are not interested in selling a paid compiler yourself,
I've noted that
there's nothing stopping someone else from doing this. They
can take the dmd
frontend under the Artistic license, compile it with the
BSD-licensed llvm
backend and boost-licensed druntime and phobos, and sell a
paid compiler,
without any permission from you or any other D contributors.
You could not do anything legally to stop this, as the
permissive OSS licenses
allow it. However, as one of the main authors of this code,
do you have any
preference for or against someone taking your code to do this?
Part of issuing it under a permissive license is I won't try to
block someone from doing whatever they want to that is allowed
by the license.
I understand, but that wasn't exactly my question.
I wondered if you have any opinion on such code reuse, if someone
takes your code and closes it, even if you wouldn't try to block
it because you have already released it under a permissive
license.
Some wouldn't try to close the source if you expressed a
preference that it not be done- I have no such compunction, if
the license allows closing source, but others might- just
wondering if you have an opinion or preference on your source
being closed up.
Thanks for all the great work you have done on D and the dmd
compiler. As much as I'd like to see a commercial
implementation, it is amazing how much you have given away for
free. :)
