3 ms·

It's novel, as far as I know. I wouldn't be surprised to see inspirations from a bunch of places (Microsoft's programming language history is old and storied[1]

It's novel, as far as I know. I wouldn't be surprised to see inspirations from a bunch of places (Microsoft's programming language history is old and storied[1] and we've had many teams working on many languages for many years with many compilers), but we do actually have a patent on this structure[2] (which is now open because we published under the Apache 2 license, which has a patent grant). [1] Microsoft's first product was a compiler for Altair BASIC, written by Gates himself [2] https://www.google.com/patents/US20130152061 https://www.google.com/patents/US20130152061

vog 11y ago
> but we do actually have a patent on this structure[2] (which is now open because we published under the Apache 2 license, which has a patent grant). Not meant to be snippy, but ... If you publish this under patent grant, why did you patent it in the first place? Apart from that, I must say that I'm very glad to live in a jurisdiction where these types of patents are void. I could have written down this idea long before 2011, but I never thought this would be worth patenting. (Don't get me wrong, the concept is really great, but to me it doesn't make any sense to prevent others from implementing the same idea. It's not like Microsoft had to invest thousands of dollar into research to develop this idea, and aims to refinance that development effort via patent licenses.)
- xenophonf 11y ago
  > If you publish this under patent grant, why did you patent it in the first place? It could be part of a defensive patent strategy. If they successfully received a patent for that, then it makes it that much harder for a malicious third party to troll them. And if you ask me, turning around and publishing the patent under the APL demonstrates good faith to the /libre/ software community (it's a GPLv3-compatible license, no less), so that's a strategic win, too.
  - vog 11y ago
    Wow, this is an interesting strategy. To summarize, just to make sure I got this right: 1. They make use the patent protection clauses via APL (and also GPLv3) 2. They use to to protect it from their own patent Result: Their patent ensures that all Free Software implementations must use a strong Copyleft license - APL, GPLv3, AGPLv3 or similar. (Or they have to try to get a patent license from MS.) What's still unclear to me: Does it affect other implementations? Assume that Clang/LLVM wants to implement "syntax trivia". Will they have to use exactly their implementation, and thus have to switch from their BSD-style license to APL or (A)GPL?

vog 11y ago

> but we do actually have a patent on this structure[2] (which is now open because we published under the Apache 2 license, which has a patent grant). Not meant to be snippy, but ... If you publish this under patent grant, why did you patent it in the first place? Apart from that, I must say that I'm very glad to live in a jurisdiction where these types of patents are void. I could have written down this idea long before 2011, but I never thought this would be worth patenting. (Don't get me wrong, the concept is really great, but to me it doesn't make any sense to prevent others from implementing the same idea. It's not like Microsoft had to invest thousands of dollar into research to develop this idea, and aims to refinance that development effort via patent licenses.)

xenophonf 11y ago
> If you publish this under patent grant, why did you patent it in the first place? It could be part of a defensive patent strategy. If they successfully received a patent for that, then it makes it that much harder for a malicious third party to troll them. And if you ask me, turning around and publishing the patent under the APL demonstrates good faith to the /libre/ software community (it's a GPLv3-compatible license, no less), so that's a strategic win, too.
- vog 11y ago
  Wow, this is an interesting strategy. To summarize, just to make sure I got this right: 1. They make use the patent protection clauses via APL (and also GPLv3) 2. They use to to protect it from their own patent Result: Their patent ensures that all Free Software implementations must use a strong Copyleft license - APL, GPLv3, AGPLv3 or similar. (Or they have to try to get a patent license from MS.) What's still unclear to me: Does it affect other implementations? Assume that Clang/LLVM wants to implement "syntax trivia". Will they have to use exactly their implementation, and thus have to switch from their BSD-style license to APL or (A)GPL?