Considerations For FLOSS Hackers About Oracle vs. Google
Sep 07, 2010, 13:05 (0 Talkback[s])
(Other stories by Bradley M. Kuhn)
"I'm sorry that I was right about this, but we should now
finally learn the lesson: languages like Java and C# are dangerous.
Single companies developed them, and there are live, unexpired
patents that can easily be used in a group to attack FaiF
implementations. Of course, that doesn't mean other language
infrastructures are completely safe from patents, but I believe
there is greater relative risk of a system with patent
consolidation at a single company.
"It also bears repeating the point I made on Linux Outlaws last
July: this doesn't mean the Free Software community shouldn't have
FaiF implementations of all languages. In fact, we absolutely
should, because we do want developers who are familiar with those
languages to bring their software over to GNU/Linux and other Free
Software systems.
"However, this lawsuit proves that choosing some languages for
newly written Free Software is dangerous and should be avoided,
especially when there are safer choices like C, C++, Python, and
Perl."
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