> remember when programming languages were free? This is actually the golden age of free programming languages. Previously, if you wanted a high quality compi

> remember when programming languages were free? This is actually the golden age of free programming languages. Previously, if you wanted a high quality compiler, you had to either get it from the vendor of your operating system or license one for a lot of money. Now, you have access to multiple high-quality compilers. In addition, even if you had a free compiler, you would have to pay for floppy disks or a cd-rom. Now you can download it for free. There is also a lot more information for learning about new programming languages thanks to the Internet. Finally, you also have access to libraries/frameworks like LLVM that make it much easier to build your own compiled languages. For example, Rust probably would have taken much longer to get where it has, if it was not able to leverage the LLVM infrastructure early on for things such as optimizations and cross-platform compilation. Now with regard to corporate control/backing of languages, if you look at computing history, you will see that most successful programming languages have been backed by some corporation (there are exceptions, though). Fortran was backed by IBM. C and C++ was backed by AT&T and later Microsoft (especially for Windows). Pascal was backed by Borland. Java was backed by Sun. Rust was backed by Mozilla. The question is not so much if a corporation backs a language but rather how it goes about building a community around the language. IMO, I think Mozilla did a very good job of building a very broad community around Rust so it became more than just a Mozilla language.