On 10/03/10 14:41, Andrew Marlow wrote:
I just downloaded and installed DMD for Windoze and had a look at the file
license.txt installed in C:\D. It contains some rather worrying text:
---
The Software is not generally available software. It has not undergone
testing and may contain errors. The Software was not designed to operate after
December 31, 1999.
---
I believe this is some sort of legacy from when Symantec owned the code,
it can safely be ignored, I think it has to be left in for legal reasons
though, I'm not completely sure... I agree that it needs to go if
possible :)
This is followed by the usual sort of disclaimer. But it is not a good opening.
And it closes with stuff that is even more worrying:
---
The Software is copyrighted and comes with a single user license,
and may not be redistributed. If you wish to obtain a redistribution license,
please contact Digital Mars.
---
This is correct. The DMD Front End is dual licensed under the GNU GPL
version 1 and the Artistic License (both included with the source). The
source for the backend is available, but is a single user license, as
seen in backendlicense.txt.
The FAQ taks about D being open source and it looks like the source zip may be
downloaded (I haven't tried) but the warning above is a bit off-putting.
Normally open source can be freely distributed, but not D, it seems. And what
does the license entitle the user to do? It doesn't say. It doesn't even list
things that are prohibited.
The FAQ at http://digitalmars.com/d/2.0/faq.html#q5 says what I said
above, it isn't extremely clear, but it does :)
Can the wording of this license be improved please? IMHO it should identify
more clearly what users can and can't do. And surely it is expected to work
after December 1999. It wouldn't hurt to assign the copyright more clearly
either rather than just say it is copyrighted but not who/what the copright
holder is, e.g.
That'd be nice, I guess it's up to Symantec what Walter can do with it
though... I'm guessing they're being more restrictive than they need to
be, in the event that something bad does happen they don't wanna get
sued over it :)
Copyright (c) 2010 Digital Mars Ltd. All rights reserved.
Regards,
Andrew Marlow
