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Microsoft Applies For .NET Patent
Wojina writes "Microsoft has applied for a comprehensive patent on what appears to be the entire implementation of the .NET CLR (Common Language Runtime) and the framework APIs. Microsoft's CLR is an implementation of the CLI (submitted to ECMA for standardization). Does this bode ill for the Mono project? See the CNET News story." And a chaser: Nept points to this interesting Microsoft-funded .NET obfuscation project.
I think Donald Knuth has prior art.
Looks like they are patenting. The concept of client server computing.
Well it looks like we all owe them everything.
Where should we send the check?
This note was originally published at John Munsch weblog on January the 14th.
.NET to fail and fail badly
.NET "rebuttal" that I linked to above, "For non-profit use VS.NET can be had pretty cheaply, especially if you know anyone that is in college somewhere." Pretty cheaply? For a non-profit (that means charities, churches, universities, the hobbiest who is going to give away his work for FREE)... pretty cheaply? Wow. That is well and truly pathetic. To try and justify it, and say, oh well, you can try to scam an educational discount so it won't be so dear, is even more pathetic.
.NET commercials with William H. Gacy telling you how great it is without really ever telling you anything about it? Microsoft doesn't trust .NET to stand on its own technical merits and it knows it may go like cod-liver oil down the gullets of a lot of people who have seen how the company works behind closed doors even if it were the tech shiznit.
.NET just in case there wasn't any grassroots community who actually wanted to do it. Or maybe just in case there was and they couldn't control it.
.NET for other platforms? If those same people were working on giving us new libraries and new tools for an already existing language instead of pouring in the thousands of man hours it's going to take to build a copy of the C# compiler or a .NET version of Ant and JUnit?
Lots of reasons why I want
It's benefits a criminal organization. Not one that's been found guilty of crimes once or maybe twice, but lots and lots of times. Those crimes are many and varied, but here's just a few of them: Stac Electronics v. Microsoft, DOJ v. Microsoft, Sun v. Microsoft.
P.S. If you want to split hairs, Stac v. Microsoft isn't a criminal action, it's doesn't stem from a criminal abuse of their monopoly like the other two cases. Instead it was just a case of a small company being driven out of business by willful patent infringement, theft of trade secrets, etc.
Microsoft isn't just one thing anymore. It's too damn big for that. I'm sure even Bill himself knows better than to think that he truly controls the whole ship because it's become big enough that he can't possibly know all the projects, people, etc. anymore. But even a really large company still has a kind of collective personality that it exudes and a large part of the personality both internal and external to Microsoft for many years now is that of a total control freak.
If they don't own it, if they don't control it, if they didn't create it, if it doesn't have a broad stamp from Microsoft on it, then they don't want it. Sometimes it's sufficient for the thing to merely exist and they'll refuse to acknowledge it, other times they need to actively stamp it out because they can't control it.
When was the last time you can remember Microsoft saying they supported a standard? That is, not something they invented and submitted a RFC for, an actual, take it off the shelf and re-implement it without renaming it or "improving" it so it doesn't work with anybody else standard. C++? Basic? HTML? A video or audio codec? Java? Anything?
I'm sure there's something, somebody will point out their excellent support for TCP/IP or something and I'm sure that's true. But if you were to look at Microsoft as a person in your life, you'd wonder what was wrong with him or her such that so much had to be controlled by that person.
When your business is selling the operating systems that 90+% of everybody uses, software development tools should not be a profit center.
Why should I have to plunk down a couple of thousand dollars for a "universal subscription" in order to have access to compilers and basic development information? Sun doesn't have to do that? On this point I'll quote from the
Marketing. Have you been "lucky" enough to catch one of the
So they are going to pull a page out of Intel's bum-bum-buh-bum "Intel Inside" playbook and try to sell the brand like it's sneakers and cola. Trust us, you'll look cool if you use it, and we'll keep hammering the brand on TV so somebody who doesn't have much tech savvy in your organization will ask you if you are using it, or have plans to port to it, or whatever, even if he hasn't got a clue what "it" is in this case.
They don't trust you. They don't like what they can't control and they can't control you. They can try and they always will keep trying but ultimately you are going to see them keep trying to do things and always keep a step towards the door just so they can bolt if they have to. Want to see what I mean? Go visit GotDotNet sometime if you haven't already been there. It's the grassroots community website that Microsoft put up to support
Ever been to SourceForge? Of course you have, everybody has because that's one of the hubs of all open source projects. You can go there and get the source of thousands of cool open source projects and it really serves the community well. There's even hundreds of projects now that list C# among their programming languages. So why did Microsoft feel compelled to create their own GotDotNet Workspaces that is clearly just a ripoff of SourceForge?
A few reasons are fairly clear: First, at many of their workspaces you don't get in unless they know who you are. Ever been stopped at SourceForge and asked for a name and password to look at a project? What about download binaries or source? No? At GotDotNet you will, lots of projects are marked with a lock. Second, forget about all those messy licenses that Microsoft might not approve of, you don't need to worry your little head about BSD vs. GPL vs. LGPL. You've got the one true workspace license that you have to agree to, or else you won't be putting your project there. Lastly, well it's kind of obvious, but it's really all about control isn't it. After all, if you aren't under their thumb, that has to be a bad thing. So a SourceForge that they control is pretty much a requirement, isn't it?
It's a really sad way for a lot of people to waste a whole lot of time rebuilding that which already exists. Wouldn't the whole computing world be a lot better if there wasn't a team of people, maybe a couple of teams of people building complete copies of
In the end, we'll all just be left with another way to do the exact same thing only in a different language. Lord knows the world benefits now from being unable to share media between France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the US, and Japan because we can't all speak the same language. I benefit every day from the fact that I can't read a Japanese manga I might enjoy or understand a TV show from Europe. Once you are done building this tower, go build a few more right beside it using Perl, Python, and Ruby too. They're all trailing behind in certain areas, we need to make sure the same set of stuff is reinvented and rewritten for all of them too.
Hell, i think Apache can claim prior art...
"I TOLD YOU SO" goes out to the Mono project guys. You can't trust Microsoft. Unless they had signed a solid, binding legal document that says "this is the .NET spec, and MS irrevocably grants free patent licenses to anyone implementing it", you should not touch it. Java has no patent problems. The open source community should stick to Java instead of dealing with MS.
... When a patented or copyrighted product is one of many products competing in a market, antitrust issues typically do not arise from unilateral conduct. However, when a patented or copyrighted product is so successful that it evolves into its own economic market, succeeds in garnering a large market share, or is essential to compete in a market, the antitrust laws and the intellectual property laws collide. The antitrust laws' primary purpose of preserving competition is frustrated when the holder of a patent or copyright exercises the exclusionary market power that comes with those rights.
The United States Supreme Court has yet to deal with these knotty issues, although the Court apparently is seriously considering doing so....
Cheers, Joel
Chalk another one up for greed and mis-guided beliefs. IBM backs up their talk about not charging for their patents by donating software to open source. Until microsoft puts their money where their mouth is, they just lost a huge chunk of credibility.
From Mono's FAQ
Question 122: Could patents be used to completely disable Mono (either submarine patents filed now, or changes made by Microsoft specifically to create patent problems)?
No. First, its basic functional capabilities have pre-existed too long to be held up by patents. The basic components of Mono are technologically equivalent to Sun's Java technology, which has been around for years.
Mono will also implement multi-language and multi-architecture support, but there are previous technologies such as UCSD p-code and ANDF that also support multiple languages using a common intermediate language. The libraries are similar to other language's libraries, so again, they're too similar to be patentable in large measure.
However, if Microsoft does patent some technology, then our plan is to either (1) work around it, (2) chop out patented pieces, (3) find prior art that would render the patent useless. Not providing a patented capability would weaken the interoperability, but it would still provide the free software / open source software community with good development tools, which is the primary reason for developing Mono.
-- "of course thats just my opinion, I could be wrong." --Dennis Miller
- The Blue Screen Of Death
- The 200-page EULA in a 5-line scroll-pane
- Solitaire as a Productivity Application
- FUD as a revenue-centre
Didn't they invent Al Gore also?Linux has had platform independent coding since the days of Java,
Back up, most unix-ish C code can be compiled on any vaguely unix-like system with very little modification. I'd call that platform independence, wouldn't you?
Imagine that, and without the overhead of a bloated VM to slow things way down.
One of the biggest obstacles for
All your base are belong to us!
The above is just as rediculous as the real thing.
--sex
Very popular slashdot journal for adul
Patents have become an increasingly common way for software makers to exert control over their intellectual property.
They may also be doing it to prevent or reduce somebody else from filing a similar patent against them. IOW, protecting their own ass from stupid lawsuits. Thus, it is kind of hard to assertain the real motivation behind such.
Table-ized A.I.
Please raise your hand if you thought Microsoft was going to allow .NET to be a reasonable and viable platform on non-Windows operating systems!
All of those raising your hands, please contact me. I have an exciting opportunity for you. I'm trying to get some money out of Nigeria.
-Teckla
How are, for example, a web server (handles requests submitted by remote devices) and web browser (interface to present functions used to access resources) not covered by this claim? The next independent claim is:
Like, e.g. SETI@Home over TCP/IP? Or PVM?
Or claim 19:
...like, say, Mozilla.
Of course, there are dependent claims that try to make this more specific (ooh, using XML documents over a network, that's original). And, of course, the whole thing could be rejected by the patent office.
Still, it's like they didn't even make an effort to try and avoid the most obvious prior-art objections. Almost like they have complete contempt for the patent office, and confidence that no one will dare to challenge their multi-billion-dollar legal war chest if they ever do assert patent rights over someone. But no, that's crazy.
If a thing is not diminished by being shared, it is not rightly owned if it is only owned & not shared. S. Augustine
1. A software architecture for a distributed computing system comprising: an application configured to handle requests submitted by remote devices over a network; and an application program interface to present functions used by the application to access network and computing resources of the distributed computing system.
:)
There is so much prior art for this claim it's not even funny.
But wait, it gets even funnier in claim #4....
4. A software architecture as recited in claim 1, wherein the application program interface comprises: a first group of services related to creating Web applications; a second group of services related to constructing client applications; a third group of services related to data and handling XML documents; and a fourth group of services related to base class libraries.
What?!! A network web service that can handle XML data using (said with pinky put to side of mouth) "CLASS LIBRARIES."
Hmmmmmm... Now where have I seen this before? Maybe Microsoft will try to patent a network service for sending and receiving text messages for the express purpose of communicating.
This is just another example of why software patents need to DIE! DIE! DIE! The sad thing is that about 50 guys had to waste their time writing this patent. Does anyone else see the irony of the first name listed on the patent, "Adam Smith"?
Adam Smith wrote in his famous book, The Wealth of Nations, "Every man, as long as he does not violate the laws of justice, is left perfectly free to pursue his own interest his own way, and to bring both his industry and capital into competition with those of any other man or order of men."
Do you see the irony now? Today he would be be called an "ANARCHIST!" and he would definately be at home (somewhat) on slashdot.
Yeah, like the US Patent Office is really choosy about what they'll accept in the way of patents.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Will it even stand up with Mono around? Even if it is Microsoft's idea to begin with, they didn't apply for the patent until after Mono showed up.
I'm not sure it will fly. US Code title 35 Sec. 102 says something like
"A person shall be entitled to a patent unless the invention was patented or described in a printed publication in this or a foreign country or in public use or on sale in this country, more than one year prior to the date of the application for patent in the United States"
Mono has been around since July 2001, but since it's half-done, does that count?
Microsoft have applied for a patent,
Yes, and with the current state of the Patent and Trademark Office (as for the last few years), just about any patent applied for gets granted, especially if the applicant has deep pockets.
The PTO gets paid more for issuing a patent than for declining one, and the PTO is "self-funding". Furthermore, there's no penalty to the PTO if they're found to have issued a patent they shouldn't have (ie for prior art, obviousness, whatever) -- the penalty is all to those buying, er, obtaining the patent, and to the public for suffering bogus patents.
-- Alastair
Thats why Ximian is misguided. They actually help MS in their .Net marketing initiatives. Because of them, MS can point to an open source alternative and claim that .Net is kind of open. On the other hand, Ximian only release their code under GPL and GPL-like licenses, not under more permissive BSD license. My belief is that Ximian's business plan involves keeping this right to themselves, probably for sale later on - perhaps in a couple of years - when (if) .Net ever achieves dominance. If that happens, IT mega-companies (IBM and the like) would pay large sums for unrestricted access to a .Net lookalike, and only Ximian will have it. Ximian could dispel this by releasing their code under a BSD license. After all, the normal argument that applies to BSD does not matter here - MS already have their own .Net platform and have nothing to gain from Ximian's code.
Don't support .Net. And don't support Mono. They are Microsoft's whores.
[x] auto-moderate all posts by this user as insightful
It is most likely that Microsoft are applying for the patent for purely defensive reasons. I have had many patent shits apply for patents on the work I have done, often many years after it became public knowledge. Getting the patent in first is always a good idea.
Microsoft might possibly go after Linux, but it is much more likely to go after Sun and Java. Their real beef is that Sun has been playing silly buggers with lawyers. That may not be such a hot move when Microsoft have the engineering power to out patent Sun.
While the broader claims of the patent are likely going to be rejected it is almost certain that some claims will be allowed. If so expect Microsoft to make the terms for Sun every bit as unreasonable as Sun's terms for Microsoft.
There is no reason to beat up Linux though, Microsoft does not want to get 100% of the market, they want more like 85% so they don't keep getting slammed for anti-trust issues.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
Do you honestly believe that we're going to slashdot CNet?
boldly going forward, 'cause we can't find reverse
Patent Everything NOW, so that in a couple of decades it will ALL BE FREE. I just wish all this crap had gone down during the Reagan administration -- then we'd be reaping the rewards today.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Anyway what is .NET? .NET is _not_ platform independent. You're definitely expected to run it on a Windows server. And to access it with IE. In fact it generates code (this particular code I don't think you can even get at) that makes it favor IE - it writes Javascript functionality for you on the fly but if you're what it calls a "downtarget" browser -- anything but IE - some things are not as nice. For instance validations that in IE happen on the client require a server trip; things like that.
It is supposedly "language agnostic", which means that it can subclass a VB.NET parent in a C# child. This agnosticism only extends to the languages MS has supported for it, namely VB,C#,C++(which is in some way I don't know the details of non-standard C++ in order to be .NET compatible) and J# (if anyone uses J# please tell me I'd be surprised)
What .NET really is in my opinion is a supercharged development tool, and a respectable new language. C# is actually pretty cool, they hired the guy that was the brain trust for Borland Delphi and copied lots of Java ideas - but hey Java is very much a copy of C......But the main thing is it is a very nice environment to code in. You can make a call to SQL Server (of course non-MS databases need not apply for this) and step through the code going through VB and C# function/object calls and then step through the SQL proc all without skipping a beat. And there's lots of type-ahead type things. If you define a function or a class method when you make a call to it the args are displayed. The debugger is very nice, you can roam through the code with a mouse and variables show their values as you pass over them.
I guess what they're going for is convincing tech managers that their programmers will be sufficiently more productive with their stuff to make up for the license costs. I try to find open-source equivalents for any features I like in the MS stuff, there are some respectable things like DDT (I think - the C/C++ debugger) - many emacs packages, JDEE in particular - Wing for Python (not open source though) - but the MS stuff really has some nice features for coders. You can get used to it.......and then news like this comes out and you remember what MS is all about.
Microsoft's CEOs have made it "patently" clear that they intend to restrict competing .Net implementations by cultivating Microsoft's patents, such as United States Patent Application #20020059425 "Distributed computing services platform" which covers the design and inter-operation of .NET based implementations.
Although there is prior art examples of individual technologies such as the JVM etc, Microsoft patents such as the one mentioned, define and claim the interoperation of the components, in such a way that any re-implementations will be sure to be covered by the patents. This remains true even for the Microsoft specs submited to standard
In comparison, Sun has granted the Apache and all open source developers FULL access to the specs, test kits and granted the full rights to develop competing products under the JSPA . Sun has also fully pened up the Java development standards process under the new Java Community Process (JCP) . Even to the point of granting full open source re-implentations of J2EE such as JBoss ...
There those that claim that .NET is open to re-implementation, but until Microsoft make a simliar public legal declaration to Sun's JSPA, any .NET reimplementation represents a pending legal mindfield.
In that case, Dave Winner and his XML-RPC project that existed before SOAP is very much prior art. I don't have time to dig up links right now, but he's written a lot about it, and SOAP.
See http://www.scripting.com for more info.
Come on now, you guys didn't really think Microsoft was going to sit back and let someone else build a free implementation of their golden goose before it was even in wide acceptance, did you? What is it about some Open Source projects that makes their fearless leaders so starry-eyed? It is perhaps surprising that Microsoft waited this long.
.NET, their new platform-of-choice, they can lock out all competing implementations, either a little bit or completely, making sure that the only full .NET implementation is the one they've delivered, under Windows.
.NET. If you ask me, the lawyers at Microsoft won an argument on this one. If MS really wanted to get a stranglehold on the market, they'd have waited until .NET actually had its foot in the door before filing a patent. By doing so now, before it's really even gotten out of the gate, they've doomed it to be "just another Windows-based programming platform".
.NET bandwagon now? Commit all your resources to a platform that still performs more poorly than those available for higher-end, non-Wintel machines? Doubtful. The development benefits are marginal compared to Java, and native application developers will still prefer C or C++. Now that Microsoft will have a legal noose around .NET's neck, all circulation is effectively cut off.
.Gnu should have seen coming a mile away. Microsoft has nothing to gain by researching, developing, and standardizing a platform that could conceivably allow network AND desktop applications to run on non-Microsoft platforms. Did Miguel et al just think Microsoft had learned the error of their ways?
Microsoft still makes more off Windows sales than anything else -- don't forget that. No matter how ubiquitous Office is, Windows is the cornerstone of the Monopoly. By filing for a patent on
This also bodes pretty badly for
Don't believe me? What shop that isn't pure Microsoft would even consider jumping onto the
It's a stupid move for Microsoft, if they intend to expand and defend their monopoly. It's also a move that projects like Mono and
You're American, right?
:P
This is a pound sign: £
# is not. It's a hash. Most Americans seem to be confused on this, I hope this post clears it up
Besides, "C Pound" just sounds stupid.
Claim 1 reads:
Tcl-DP provided an application configured to handle requests submitted by remote devices over a network (the RPC server), and an application program interface to present functions used by the application to access network and computing resources of the distributed computing system (the dp_RPC command protocol). The client application mentioned in the dependent claims is provided by any application configured as an RPC client.
Sarcazmo wrote:
> Back up, most unix-ish C code can be compiled on any
> vaguely unix-like system with very little modification. I'd
> call that platform independence, wouldn't you?
Very good point. Back in 1989-91, I was working on a 3D radiation treatment planning program, in C, that had to run under X11 on a DEC MicroVAX, HP, and a SGI, with their various flavors of Unix. The program had a single source, with all the platform dependent stuff (there wasn't a lot of it) isolated from the rest. Back then, platform independence (also known as portability) was the in thing.
Historical note: in the first year of that job, in a lab down the hall, was a pre-3.0 version of Windows. The poor primitive thing was still trying to figure out task switching. By the last year of that job, Linux was born.
> Imagine that, and without the overhead of a bloated VM
> to slow things way down.
Despite the VM and its warts, Java is still a pretty cool language. It would be quite amusing to run Java on one of today's computers side-by-side with a 1990 computer running a C program under X11. I wonder if advances in computing speed really compensate for having a VM?
"The path of peace is yours to discover for eternity."
Japanese version of "Mothra" (1961)
Please provide links to the number of times Microsoft has filed a patent infringement suit against someone. I think you will find that most if not all suits regarding patents have been against Microsoft. It would appear that Microsoft is simply trying to protect themselves.
I think you misunderstand what the obfuscator does. First, you must understand that all .NET assemblies are compiled to MSIL. Once that happens, anyone can use a tool, ILDASM.EXE, to view the "disassembled" assembly. You get function names, global variable names, parameter types, called framework functions, basically all the stuff you really would rather people not see.
.NET developers out there are happy with the functionality of the current crop of obfuscators, and many use such programs to "encrypt" their commercial apps.
This is where the obfuscators come in. They start renaming your functions, parameters, types, etc., but only in the MSIL that's in the assembly, not in your source code. There are other levels of obfuscation that some products support, but most of them will at least do this for you. If you don't think that's a big deal, go here to see for yourself. Staring at code that has all functions named "a1, a2, a3" and so one, combined with a similar naming scheme for other variables...well, it'll drive you to the bottle.
Many
First, this is a patent application, not an actual patent grant. I doubt that the application would last very long in its current form - it's too broad, even by the USPTO's narrow criteria for broadness.
Second, because Microsoft is standardizing this technology through the ECMA, as an eventual lead-in to ISO, they will be in a difficult position if they start demanding royalties or playing RAND games.
They backed off on the Kerberos thing, and they could be made to back off here too - blatantly targetting the only two competitors in the CLR space (Mono and Portable.NET) won't win them any PR points.
Third, most of what is discussed here has precedents in prior art. If Mono and Portable.NET infringe, then so does the JVM, and that's definite prior art.
We perhaps need to organise a bit to lobby on this one, but it isn't the end of the world - yet.
More information on Portable.NET here.
Naw, dude. I talked with Bill the other day and he SAID it was cool.
He wouldn't lie to me, would he?
You wouldn't be confusing the C Sharp language and the CLR with the whole of Dotnet would you?
If not, I'd appreciate a reference where MS states the intention of making ASP.NET, Windows Forms, ADO.NET etc. ECMA standards.
However, this patent shows bad faith by Microsoft. If Microsoft wanted C# to be perceived as an open language and core set of libraries, this is the last thing they would want.
Where does this leave us? We have two companies, Sun and Microsoft, that are engaged in some bizarre battle to try and control the software industry. Both have attempted to get patents that allow them to use the patent system to control who implements the language and how (yes, Sun has patents on key aspects of Java). Both are trying to keep control of the software, APIs, and future language evolution. And what is particularly ironic is that all this battle is about decades old technology.
What does this mean? Both open source and commercial users should say "no thanks" to both Java and C#. We need to get back to a model where programming languages and libraries are standardized through open standards processes and where the core language and APIs and are not covered by patents. C, C++, Smalltalk, Ada, and many other languages have shown that this is possible. In fact, had Sun not derailed and preempted the adoption of those other languages with promises of a bright Java future (on which they have failed to deliver), we might well be using some language now that is technically superior to both Java and C# and is covered by a truly open standard.
In addition to the independent claims, you have a set of "dependent" claims, which are like "The device of claim 1, where [some more specific requirement]." These dependent claims serve three purposes:
I am not a lawyer, but I have worked with a number of lawyers to draft (non-software) patent claims and to deal with US and international patent examiners.
If a thing is not diminished by being shared, it is not rightly owned if it is only owned & not shared. S. Augustine
About Java it is not a matter of "platform independent coding", but a matter of "platform independent binary" !
.net, even if the core is technically a Java platform clone, the trouble come from the fact that it is Windows centric & tied. No, do not expect mono (or other kiddies) to be real world stuff. MS spokesman has clearly said : "we could we cross platform agains MS various OS !"
... but i can not and i will not run a real world application.
... but the very truth is that what MS promiss for tomorrow is already there with Java since nearly a decade !
... and what great news here was we've got plenty of solutions in our pocket to shape the best solution: change OS, change VM, change J2EE appserver, change hardware, ... but without changing a very single line of the application !
...
;-)
The goal here is that once a developper has build a binary it is valid for each and every complient platform.
About
So, no, dotNet is not and will not be an competitor against Java platform on the "WORA" ground !
(WORA = Sun's Write Once Run Anywhere)
MS has clearly seen that Java new coding habits bring more productivity than previous technologies without compromissing the reusability of the solutions.
That's the reason, after leaving the Java project for policy reason, they 've decided to build a clone.
The fact they pushed the very core to any kind of standardization process only shows that they do no intend to standardize other part of the platforms (non-CLI APIs for instances !). This have a major impact over the potential portability of designed solution.
To explain this, if you want to design real world dotNnet solutions you are in a way or an other constraint to use the COM+ container (to get transact features for instance), by doing so, your solution become practicaly (but even virtually) Windows tied. Just because COM+ is not part of any standard stuff and is only implemented on Win32. Here is fact !
That's the reason i said earlier, mono is not real worldstuff ! It is fun : ok i can run a Csharp class or two
Here MS has done right pushing affiliates and spinnoffs to FUD the community
Want more fact ?
I got customer of mine whom first run their J2EE applications on Win2k but as soon as they realize if could not stabilized under load, they think of "what if we evaluate an other solution" ?
So we start to test and bench alternatives
At the end we came up with a high power rock stable : Linux with IBM VM, with Opensource J2EE appserver on the same hardware.
That was just amazing, cost were drastically down, stabillity was here and customer thanks lords to have choosen Java 2 years before !
Gess what, i love to have choice
If this application was running on dotNet what would be his choice ?
- Rebuild bottom-top a new application
- Go and pray for a miracle
- Buy a new cluster or blades
- Wait for Windows2003 SP2
That's why i do argue that Linux and Java are the killer team. Java legitimate the linux choice without having to tied the solution to yet another OS.
As a conclusion, i would like to publically thanks all the Java opensource community that brought us very brilliant and reliable software solutions (JBoss, Tomcat, ant, xalaan, Batik, jedit, !
Special thanks goes to the Jakarta Apache groups
-SLK
Feel the choice for liberty !
You can only apply for a patent on things that have been kept secret before you applied. Anything that is public domain (or even published as a result of industrial espionage) can not be patented. Therefore the only thing that Microsoft can patent is the low level functionality of parts of their own runtime that were not released in the shared source version. This is stuff that would probably be implemented differently on non-windows platforms anyway, so the patent won't have much effect. For another example of how well patents work, have a look at the AAC audio compression algorithm patented by Dolby / the MPEG-LA. Currently the best AAC encoder is written by PsyTEL and doesn't use any of the patented algorithms. Algorithmic patents simply don't work. In general, a good algorithm is so obvious that someone else has already thought of it, but didn't patent it because it was so obvious, or it's so complicated that while it may appear to be the best, a little more thought can lead to an even better one.
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