delicious

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? In the case of the community-designed and Free-Software-implemented languages, the patent risk is likely spread across many companies, and mitigated by the fact that few have probably filed patents applications designed specifically to read on the language and its implementation. Since various individuals and companies contributed to the development and design, and because it was a process run by the community, it's unlikely there was a master plan by one entity to apply specifically for patents on the language.

>Mono, the open source development platform based on the .NET framework, allows developers to build Linux and cross-platform applications with improved developer productivity. Mono's .NET implementation is based on the ECMA standards for C# (http://www.ecma-international.org/publications/standards/Ecma-334.htm) and the Common Language Infrastructure (http://www.ecma-international.org/publications/standards/Ecma-335.htm). Sponsored by Novell, the Mono project has an active and enthusiastic contributing community. Mono includes both developer tools and the infrastructure needed to run .NET client and server applications. It is positioned to become the leading choice for development of Linux applications. Mono includes compilers, an ECMA-compatible runtime engine (the Common Language Runtime, or CLR), and many libraries. The libraries include Microsoft .NET compatibility libraries (including ADO.NET, System.Windows.Forms and ASP.NET), Mono's own and third party class libraries. …

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