3 ms·

I'm curious what the "few other things" are because the things you mention specifically are a few years out of date at this point. I'm not sure what licensing

by eco 13y ago

I'm curious what the "few other things" are because the things you mention specifically are a few years out of date at this point. I'm not sure what licensing issues you've had but phobos is Boost licensed which is extremely liberal (basically "use for whatever you want just don't remove this license text when copying this source code"). Pretty much everyone uses D2 these days unless they are maintaining a legacy system written in D1 and transitioning to D2 isn't worth the effort in their case. Phobos versus Tango hasn't been an issue for years. In fact, in D2 you can use Phobos and Tango side by side[1]. Rust is very interesting and I'm excited to see where it is headed but it's still rather immature compared to something like D. 1. https://github.com/SiegeLord/Tango-D2 https://github.com/SiegeLord/Tango-D2

steveklabnik 13y ago
> the things you mention specifically are a few years out of date at this point. Right, hence the 'I hear it's a bit better these days.' Maybe I should have been more clear. > I'm not sure what licensing issues you've had The whole time I was using the language, there was the dual licensed aspect of the compiler, where the front end (I think?) was not open, but the back end was? Or maybe the other way around? I think I heard that Walter ended up OSSing the entire thing. As a strong BSD proponent I find complex licensing requirements tiring. > but it's still rather immature compared to something like D. Right, I thought I said this too.
- eco 13y ago
  Yeah, Walter did end up opening up the backend to DMD but the backend is still not Free Software only because Walter is licensing it from Symantec. He accepts patches to fix problems in it but it is less than ideal. The frontend is GPL and has had the copyright assigned to the FSF. The good news is that GDC (gcc backend) and LDC (LLVM backend) both produce faster binaries than DMD and are completely open source. The only downside is they tend to be a version or two behind DMD (which at DMD's release rate is around 3-6 months or so I'd say). Also, LDC isn't available for Windows primarily because LLVM doesn't yet support SEH exceptions. In any case, the compiler's licensing doesn't affect software you write in D.

by eco 13y ago

steveklabnik 13y ago

> the things you mention specifically are a few years out of date at this point. Right, hence the 'I hear it's a bit better these days.' Maybe I should have been more clear. > I'm not sure what licensing issues you've had The whole time I was using the language, there was the dual licensed aspect of the compiler, where the front end (I think?) was not open, but the back end was? Or maybe the other way around? I think I heard that Walter ended up OSSing the entire thing. As a strong BSD proponent I find complex licensing requirements tiring. > but it's still rather immature compared to something like D. Right, I thought I said this too.

eco 13y ago
Yeah, Walter did end up opening up the backend to DMD but the backend is still not Free Software only because Walter is licensing it from Symantec. He accepts patches to fix problems in it but it is less than ideal. The frontend is GPL and has had the copyright assigned to the FSF. The good news is that GDC (gcc backend) and LDC (LLVM backend) both produce faster binaries than DMD and are completely open source. The only downside is they tend to be a version or two behind DMD (which at DMD's release rate is around 3-6 months or so I'd say). Also, LDC isn't available for Windows primarily because LLVM doesn't yet support SEH exceptions. In any case, the compiler's licensing doesn't affect software you write in D.