On Tuesday, 20 May 2014 at 22:50:45 UTC, John Colvin wrote:
On Tuesday, 20 May 2014 at 20:44:57 UTC, Andre wrote:
Hi,
I like D due to its clear syntax and power. For a business
application developer what is really missing is a full blown
IDE which enables
Rapid Application Development.
=> GUI
=> Database
=> Internet components
=> Refactoring
=> ... and a lot things more
If I compare the time I need to develop a D application and a
delphi
application there are several weeks between unfortunatelly
(my experience).
I wonder whether it is possible from a license point of view to
develop an IDE for D and sell it? Of course there are license
issues
due to fact that D must be integrated in the package but
someone would
only pay for the IDE.
On the other side, a good IDE will mass enabled D for business
application developer.
If someone will create an IDE for D like Borland has done for
Delphi
this would lead to an huge success for D in my opinion.
What do you think? Would you appreciate such an IDE?
Kind regards
André
What licensing problems do you foresee? Bear in the mind that
although the dmd backend has a restrictive licence that
prohibits redistribution without permission, permission to
redistribute is normally easy to get from Walter.
Alternatively, if the clients computer does the download of dmd
from dlang.org as part of the IDE installer then you circumvent
the problem entirely.
To the best of my (limited) knowledge, the open source licenses
used in all 3 main compilers do not prohibit redistribution
and/or selling for profit.
Also, note that linking to GPL licenced shared
libraries/dlls/dylibs or whatever you use doesn't necessarily
mean the GPL has got you wrapped in it's rather fuzzy web. AKAIK
it's a matter of debate and has never been tested in court, but
it's enough for many current creators/distributors of closed
source software for linux who call various GPL system libs via
the shared library interfaces.
Also - and this is the biggest thing that people fail to realise
in all software license debates - it is a practical impossibility
to create a software license that is well defined and valid in
all jurisdictions. For a global enterprise, almost *everything*
is legally fuzzy.
