"Specifically, I am considering the risk that a patent attack
will occur against the language or its canonical implementation. We
know that the USPTO appears to have no bounds in constantly
granting so-called "software patents", most of which are invalid
within their own system, and the rest may be like the RSA patent,
and will force our community to invent around them, or (as we had
to do with RSA), "wait them out". I'd like to consider how these
known facts apply to the implementation of language infrastructure
in the Free Software world.
"Programming languages and their associated standard libraries
and implementations evolve in three basic ways:
* A Free Software community designs and implements the language
in a grassroots fashion. Perl, PHP, and Python are a few
examples.
* A single corporate entity controls the language and its canonical
implementation. They perhaps also convince some standards body to
adopt it, but usually retain complete control. C# and Java a few
examples.
* A single corporate entity controlled the language initially, but
more than 20 years have passed and the language now has many
proprietary and Free Software implementations. C and C++ are a few
examples.
"The patent issues in each of these situations deserves
different consideration, primarily related to the dispersion of
patents that likely read on the given language implementation. We
have to assume that the USPTO has granted many patents that read on
any software a person can conceivably write. The question is
always: of all the things you can write, which has the most risk of
patent attack from the patent holders in question?"
