On Sunday, 15 June 2014 at 01:08:00 UTC, Leandro Lucarella wrote:
Joakim, el 14 de June a las 19:31 me escribiste:
The frontend was dual-licensed under the Artistic license,
which
also allows such proprietary use, so nothing has really
changed.
Mmm, even when is true that the Artistic license is a bit more
permissive than the GPL in some aspects, I think is hardly
suitable for
doing serious proprietary software (that you intent to sell).
From the artistic license that was distributed by DMD:
"You may not charge a fee for this Package itself. However, you
may
distribute this Package in aggregate with other (possibly
commercial)
programs as part of a larger (possibly commercial) software
distribution
provided that you do not advertise this Package as a product of
your
own."
Is a bit hairy, I don't think any companies would want to do
proprietary
tools using the artistic license :)
https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/dmd/blob/083271a415716cf3e35321f91826397d91c0a731/src/artistic.txt
I was referring to this clause from the Artistic license:
"4. You may distribute the programs of this Package in object
code or
executable form, provided that you do at least ONE of the
following:
a) distribute a Standard Version of the executables and
library files,
together with instructions (in the manual page or equivalent)
on where
to get the Standard Version."
So you could have always distributed a modified, closed ldc with
the frontend under the Artistic license- it would have to be ldc
as the dmd backend is proprietary- as long as you also provided
an unmodified ldc along with it.
I don't think the part of the Artistic license you excerpted
would apply to such a modified program, but even if the
advertising part applied, I doubt any commercial user would care.
Usually those who take your code _don't want_ to advertise where
they got it from. ;)
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.
Again, I think from the practical point of view is the same. If
you use
boost license and tons of proprietary tools come out CHANGING
the DMDFE
and not contributing back, then the D community might get a
boost
because the have better tools but they are missing the
contributions, so
is hard to tell if the balance would be positive or negative.
If they
don't change the DMDFE (or contribute back the changes), then
using
boost or LGPL are the same, because it doesn't matter.
Having better-quality paid tools would be a big boost, whether
they released their patches or not. You point out that
commercial users could always link against a LGPL frontend as a
library and put their proprietary modifications in their own
separate library, but that can be very inconvenient, depending on
the feature.
Also, I've pointed out a new model on this forum before, where
someone could release a closed, paid D compiler but have a
contract with their customers that all source code for a
particular binary will be released within a year or two. This
way, you get the best of both worlds, revenue from closed-source
patches and the patches are open-sourced eventually. Such mixed
models or other experimentation is possible under the freedom of
more permissive licenses like Boost, but is usually much harder
to pull off with the LGPL, as you'd be forced to separate all
proprietary code from the LGPL frontend.
