Why did Walter choose to not open source the compiler from the beginning? I would be willing to bet that it would hold the position that Ruby/Python currently hold if he had made that choice. The ability to apt-get/yum to install a language on a cheap linux server would have done wonders for its adoption, especially in the middle of the rise of linux and the web.
Perhaps that would have helped with adoption. I'm not all that convinced that would have really tipped the scales. It's been 5 years since it was open sourced and there have been over a hundred contributors but it's still only fairly recently gotten to the point where development is more about mundane bug fixes instead of implementing huge, unfinished parts of the language and blocker bugs that make the language hard to use. Open sourcing sooner would have given it a head start but even then, I don't think D would have been ready for heavy use in the middle of the rise of linux and the web.
Here's what Walter said at the time when asked why it took so long:
I've been intending to for a while, it took a while for me
to clean it up, check all the licenses, and get it into a
presentable form.
Essentially, it's pretty obvious that the world has changed,
and closed source is no longer acceptable for a mainstream
product that people will be relying on. Open source is the
future, and it's past time for dmd to join the party!
I feel like D's lack of adoption was mostly due to issues around the way things transpired, specifically the closed-source compiler and of course the big mess with the standard library. Otherwise it was well-placed and well-timed, just ill-executed.
I think it's a good point. I can't speak for Walter, but I can say I've fostered openness ever since joining D development and we're both glad things are now in the right place.
