On Saturday, 14 June 2014 at 17:07:58 UTC, Leandro Lucarella
wrote:
No free license restrict commercial use. What using boost
enable is only
proprietary use, i.e. changing the DMD FE and keeping the
changes
private, even if you distribute the binary with the compiled
DMDFE. As I
said before, there are licenses that allow anyone linking your
code to
non-free code, but you still have to provide the source code of
the
modified DMDFE if you distribute it. An example is LGPL.
The frontend was dual-licensed under the Artistic license, which
also allows such proprietary use, so nothing has really changed.
Rather than having two licenses, the Artistic license to allow
linking against the proprietary dmd backend and the GPL to allow
linking against the gcc backend, the dmd frontend now has a
single Boost license that allows both, since the Boost license is
considered GPL-compatible.
From the standpoint of what the frontend's license allows, not
much has changed, but the simplicity and clarity of the Boost
license puts the frontend on firmer footing.
I realize you prefer the LGPL, to force others to contribute back
to the frontend if they modify and distribute it, but the Boost
license is much simpler and as Walter points out, proprietary use
can help D's adoption.
