Re: [PATCH v3 1/14] D: The front-end (DMD) language implementation and license.

[Iain Buclaw <ibuclaw at gdcproject dot org>]

On 25 October 2017 at 03:06, Jeff Law <law@redhat.com> wrote:
> On 10/18/2017 01:33 AM, Iain Buclaw wrote:
>> On 6 October 2017 at 14:51, Ian Lance Taylor <iant@golang.org> wrote:
>>> On Fri, Oct 6, 2017 at 1:34 AM, Iain Buclaw <ibuclaw@gdcproject.org> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Out of curiosity, I did have a look at some of the tops of gofrontend
>>>> sources this morning.  They are all copyright the Go Authors, and are
>>>> licensed as BSD.  So I'm not sure if having copyright FSF and
>>>> distributing under GPL is strictly required.  And from a maintenance
>>>> point of view, it would be easier to merge in upstream changes as-is
>>>> without some diff/merging tool.
>>>
>>> The GCC steering committee accepted the gofrontend code under a
>>> non-GPL license with the understanding that the master code would live
>>> in a separate repository that would be mirrored into the GCC repo (the
>>> master repository for gofrontend is currently at
>>> https://go.googlesource.com/gofrontend/).  Personally I don't see a
>>> problem with doing the same for the D frontend.
>>>
>>> Ian
>>
>> Should I request that maybe Donald from FSF chime in here?  I'd rather
>> avoid another stalemate on this.
> Absolutely, though RMS should probably be included on any discussion
> with Donald.  I think the FSF needs to chime in and I think the steering
> committee needs to chime in once we've got guidance from the FSF.
>
> The first and most important question that needs to be answered is
> whether or not the FSF would be OK including the DMD bits with the
> license (boost) as-is into GCC.
>
> If that's not acceptable, then we'd have to look at some kind of script
> to fix the copyrights.
> Jeff
>


Just touching base here, hope you all had a good New Year.

So far, I've only had a general "Yes this is fine" from Ted who's
managing the copyright assignments at the FSF.

His his initial response being:
---
If the D files are all Boost v.1 and we can get assignments from all
contributors, there is no problem including the files as there are
currently. Boost is compatible with GPLv3 or later since it is
basically a [permissive license][0].

[0]: https://directory.fsf.org/wiki/License:Boost1.0
---

And subsequent follow-up:
---
The questions that remain still are whether there are any unaccounted
for contributors to this (but I don't believe this is the case from
the first pass).  We have the assignment for the past and future code
from Digital Mars.  The second question, which is outside of my
discretion is deciding whether the Boost license is acceptable.  It
seems that it is compatible so it doesn't appear that incompatibility
is a problem, but of course there are still policy considerations.
These are currently being discussed on the mailing-list and I will add
this message to the thread.
---


I have asked for clarity on a few more finer points, but still haven't
heard back after a number of attempts to get an answer back.

Can we get discussion rolling again on this?

Since the last message, upstream dmd has switched all copyrights to
"The D Language Foundation", which has been reflected downstream in
gdc.

So, as a policy consideration from the SC, is it acceptable to have
the following notice at the top of all dfrontend/* sources?

---
Copyright (C) 2010-2018 by The D Language Foundation, All Rights Reserved
All Rights Reserved, written by Walter Bright
http://www.digitalmars.com
Distributed under the Boost Software License, Version 1.0.
(See accompanying file LICENSE or copy at http://www.boost.org/LICENSE_1_0.txt)
---

And if no, what should it instead be?

There are no restrictions on changing the copyright to FSF and license as GPLv3+

Regards
Iain.