D was always Open Source and free as in beer. It was not Free Software, which is... | Hacker News

Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit

		qznc on Jan 19, 2017 \| parent \| context \| favorite \| on: Rust vs. Go D was always Open Source and free as in beer. It was not Free Software, which is a problem for inclusion in Debian main et al. You get the package from a third-party repo. The reference compiler backend is still only free as in beer, so there seems to be no way to include "DMD" in Debian. However, LDC (reference frontend + LLVM backend) is practically in sync with DMD today. The advantage of DMD is faster compilation. LDC gives you faster programs. So, for development I prefer DMD for the faster iteration.

flukus on Jan 19, 2017 [–]

Was it restriction free or did it have limitations on things like stack size like a lot of commercial compilers did?

qznc on Jan 20, 2017 | [–]

No restrictions. There was nothing you could pay for in D.

The backend comes from the Digital Mars C++ compiler, which is/was commercial. That is probably the source of the confusion.

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact