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digitalmars.D - is this FUD?

reply B Jakob <benzofurans-mail001 yahoo.com> writes:
hi
this is my first post - so hello everybody ;-)

I hate to ask questions that have been ask over and over again. I also 
not really fond of legal questions. But I have to ask some licencing 
questions about dmd and gdc.

As a newbie in the D land I have to say that trying to find information 
about lincencing of D is a real seek and hide game.

the reasing why I got interested in this again is the following 
statement of this blog article

(http://leonardo-m.livejournal.com/52462.html):

-------------------------

"[...] GDC, the only working GCC frontend (http://dgcc.sf.net/ ), is 
largely copyrighted to DigitalMars. This makes it impossible to 
officially include it in the GCC distribution. [...]"

------------------------

here is a thread on a digitalmars list that points in the same direction:
http://www.digitalmars.com/d/archives/D/gnu/Any_progress_with_inclusion_of_GDC_into_the_main_GCC_trunk_2695.html


BUT !!

on the wiki4d page they say:
(http://prowiki.org/wiki4d/wiki.cgi?FaqRoadmap#Licensing)

"The DMD front-end source is available under dual ( GPL and  Artistic) 
licens"

even the best piece of information from George Wrede on this subject 
doesn't make it clear to me if the comment on the blog is true or not:
http://www.digitalmars.com/d/archives/digitalmars/D/37364.html#N37364

So please, can somebody help with this?

thanks

//benzo
Mar 08 2008
parent reply Michel Fortin <michel.fortin michelf.com> writes:
On 2008-03-08 05:37:50 -0500, B Jakob <benzofurans-mail001 yahoo.com> said:


 (http://leonardo-m.livejournal.com/52462.html):
 
 -------------------------
 
 "[...] GDC, the only working GCC frontend (http://dgcc.sf.net/ ), is 
 largely copyrighted to DigitalMars. This makes it impossible to 
 officially include it in the GCC distribution. [...]"
 
 ------------------------



 on the wiki4d page they say:
 (http://prowiki.org/wiki4d/wiki.cgi?FaqRoadmap#Licensing)
 
 "The DMD front-end source is available under dual ( GPL and  Artistic) licens"


Both are true: the DMD Front End is copyrighted to Digital Mars but 
Digital Mars makes it available under the GPL and Artistic licenses. 
The issue is that the FSF won't include code in the official GCC tree 
if the copyright is under someone else's name, even if available under 
the GPL. They want the copyright assigned to them, or the work given to 
public domain.

--
Michel Fortin
michel.fortin michelf.com
http://michelf.com/
Mar 08 2008
parent Paul Findlay <r.lph50+d gmail.com> writes:
 The issue is that the FSF won't include code in the official GCC tree
 if the copyright is under someone else's name, even if available under
 the GPL. They want the copyright assigned to them, or the work given to
 public domain.


Didn't they just let in the eclipse compiler for java as a front-end for
GCJ/GCC 4.3? But I think it took a lot of effort to convine RMS, and this
already after they had an extensive effort with GCJ.

 - Paul
Mar 10 2008