> Why do you think Microsoft is giving patent promises for C#, .Net and others[0] (But not licensing their software to Apache/GPL)? Yes. Because they can bring harm to their business.
I think you continue to over simplify. This actually looks to me like Microsoft is doing their due-diligence in ensuring that the effects of their licensing are well-bounded with respect to patents. GPLv3 et al tend to hand-wave the actual patents covered, and leave it up to someone else to decide which patents actually apply, and how.
Also, it does appear that Microsoft is using the MIT, BSD and Apache licenses[0]
> Why Do you think Apple ditched Objective C?
They didn't. The way I see it is that Swift is to Objective C as C#/.Net is to COM -- which is to say the underlying tech isn't going away anytime soon. They've just made a nice, shiny high-level abstraction. Unless there is some announcement I've missed where Apple said they are throwing away Obj-C and Obj-C tooling and rewriting everything in Swift.
> So, they had legal reasons too for yet another language.
This is a stretch. There was and is nothing preventing Apple from continuing to develop and use and sell product made with Objective C. They don't even care about GCC -- they have Clang.
Also, there are plenty of suitable alternatives to GNU Coreutils, so please don't think that this means anything to Apple. The GPLv2 versions work well for what Apple needs, so they continue to use them. It is convenient for Apple. They could stop using GNU software entirely if they wanted and nothing would change.
> We shall see the struggle of apple someday, because they can't sue Samsung again, just because they are using patents of Apple which are derived from swift.
I have no idea what you mean by this. Companies sue other companies that infringe on their patents because NOT doing so is a tacit license. Why even file a patent then?
To be fair, I think Apple first sued Samsung because their phones looked like iPhones (or so Apple claimed) and were concerned about how that would impact public perception. I don't think has anything to do with software, which is the topic at hand.
> And last, why do you think language is not patented?
Because the language itself, at its core, is agnostic of anything patent-worthy. How the compiler works? Platform support? Potentially patentable. A programming language allows a user to textually express what they want a generic computer to do, and at it's core is not patentable (as far as I understand the US patent system). It gets fuzzy around the edges, but you can't patent a language. It is an abstract idea.
In any case, I get the impression you think these companies are evil. They're not. They're businesses looking out for the interests of their shareholders and their customers. There is no dark agenda against free software. It is just unfortunately complicated for big businesses.
I think you continue to over simplify. This actually looks to me like Microsoft is doing their due-diligence in ensuring that the effects of their licensing are well-bounded with respect to patents. GPLv3 et al tend to hand-wave the actual patents covered, and leave it up to someone else to decide which patents actually apply, and how.
Also, it does appear that Microsoft is using the MIT, BSD and Apache licenses[0]
> Why Do you think Apple ditched Objective C?
They didn't. The way I see it is that Swift is to Objective C as C#/.Net is to COM -- which is to say the underlying tech isn't going away anytime soon. They've just made a nice, shiny high-level abstraction. Unless there is some announcement I've missed where Apple said they are throwing away Obj-C and Obj-C tooling and rewriting everything in Swift.
> So, they had legal reasons too for yet another language.
This is a stretch. There was and is nothing preventing Apple from continuing to develop and use and sell product made with Objective C. They don't even care about GCC -- they have Clang.
Also, there are plenty of suitable alternatives to GNU Coreutils, so please don't think that this means anything to Apple. The GPLv2 versions work well for what Apple needs, so they continue to use them. It is convenient for Apple. They could stop using GNU software entirely if they wanted and nothing would change.
> We shall see the struggle of apple someday, because they can't sue Samsung again, just because they are using patents of Apple which are derived from swift.
I have no idea what you mean by this. Companies sue other companies that infringe on their patents because NOT doing so is a tacit license. Why even file a patent then?
To be fair, I think Apple first sued Samsung because their phones looked like iPhones (or so Apple claimed) and were concerned about how that would impact public perception. I don't think has anything to do with software, which is the topic at hand.
> And last, why do you think language is not patented?
Because the language itself, at its core, is agnostic of anything patent-worthy. How the compiler works? Platform support? Potentially patentable. A programming language allows a user to textually express what they want a generic computer to do, and at it's core is not patentable (as far as I understand the US patent system). It gets fuzzy around the edges, but you can't patent a language. It is an abstract idea.
In any case, I get the impression you think these companies are evil. They're not. They're businesses looking out for the interests of their shareholders and their customers. There is no dark agenda against free software. It is just unfortunately complicated for big businesses.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.NET_Framework#Licensing