Why? What makes the Oracle/Sun license so much more dangerous?
No ECMA/ISO/ANSI standard, Oracle controls the JCP process, no patent covenant comparable to Microsoft's. In addition, Sun/Oracle has a long history of threatening alternative implementations with legal action, so these legal issues are not theoretical.
That doesn't tell us what would have hypothetically have happened if Google had decided to do to.NET what they did to Java.
It tells you exactly what would have happened, namely nothing. Microsoft couldn't have sued Google like Oracle sued Google.
Now you're moving the goalposts. It was your argument the patents didn't matter because they were all going to expire soon anyways. You were wrong.
No, the problem is that you are confusing multiple meanings of.NET. There is the open source.NET platform, a set of APIs that was created years ago and that is open and patent-unencumbered. That's like ANSI C with the C standard library. Then there is.NET as a Microsoft-proprietary platform. That includes the open source.NET platform, but is much larger. Microsoft adds new APIs and new functionality to that, and some of that is patented, just like Google adds proprietary and patented functionality to Android, and many companies add proprietary and patented functionality to C/C++ in C/C++ libraries. The additions Microsoft makes to the.NET platform now don't affect the legal status of the open source.NET platform because they are not part of it.
In any case, it's pointless to argue this. Java fanboys, Sun/Oracle shills, and deluded open source developers have badmouthed C# for so long that it has no chance. I just hope we can kill Java for good, because Java is both technically poor and a legal minefield, and then replace it with something else: Java must die. At this point, Swift and Go look like the best candidates to replace it.
That's a really bad example because there have been some huge lawsuits surrounding Unix.
That was my point and why I gave the example!
You don't trust the company, you trust the contract. This has been a standard way of doing business for years.
Most open source software that replicates some commercial function has been developed without contracts. Most of the time it has worked out just fine.
The situation with C#/.NET is actually better, because Microsoft's patent covenant is pretty reasonable, in particular to the dangerous terms Sun and Oracle have been offering.
I think C#/.NET is a lost cause at this point because the anti-Microsoft and pro-Oracle (aka pro-Java) forces have been too vociferous and have too much invested. It's a shame; FOSS would be much better off if Mono/C# had been adopted a decade ago. Maybe we can salvage things with Swift. However, as far as I'm concerned, Java must die.
how nice of you to ignore that both the NSA and Drone programs began under Bush.
So you are implying that because Bush started those programs, Clinton and Obama had license to expand those programs and murder and spy without any opposition? Sorry, I happen to disagree.
Sounds good. Do you expect Trump to look at every grant proposal? No?
Did I say that? Did I imply that? No. I expect him to set a budget for climate change research overall, not look at individual proposals. Hopefully that's a budget that's a small fraction of the current budget. He can then leave it to the scientists to figure out how to reduce their spending by 80%. While he is at it, he might also eliminate the DOE and put the whatever remains of federally funded climate research under other departments.
"our right to refuse participation in any U.S. government contracts that violate constitutionally protected civil liberties."
If only they had shown that kind of backbone during the Obama years and made such a statement about any involvement of IBM in NSA surveillance, creation of massive financial and medical databases on US citizens, and drone killings.
They stacked the committee with their "partners" to gain passage for a deliberately terrible document format.
They wanted a format that was as backwards compatible with their binary format as possible. Is that horrible? Sure. But it's nevertheless an open format.
And that's still a lot better than Sun/Oracle, who withdrew from the standards body altogether over the requirement for RAND licensing terms and took complete control over the specification and language (and doing a piss poor job at that).
Last time I checked, I don't need.NET for anything,
So what do you program in?
All major platforms now have a (mostly) safe, compiled, garbage collected language, usually one of Java, C#, Swift, or Go. Maybe you don't need something like that, but lots of people do. Java is patent encumbered, owned by a litigious company, and a lousy design. Swift and Go are niche languages with limited libraries, no standards, and no clarity on the patent situation either. What does that leave?
And as soon as you fall off the spec, those patents aren't covered. Whether Google would have run afoul or not would depend on how they deviated, as in did they use any of the patents in non-conforming material.
You are misreading what that clause means. That clause simply means that Microsoft only grants you patents that are necessary for implementing the spec, no more and no less. That is exactly what such a covenant should look like. If you disagree, try to formulate a better version of the same clause.
Is that so? Because.NET keeps evolving and new patents keep on being filed.
I.e., Microsoft keeps creating new libraries for the.NET platform and creates patents for them. That's just like Google, Apple, IBM, Oracle, Facebook, and others do for C++, Java, Swift, and other platforms. Are you going to stop using C++ because Google writes patents related to new C++ libraries they create?
For values of "our" that don't include the people who suffer to save you a few bucks in the short term. Maybe you are old and will be dead before it gets really expensive where you live too.
Well, whatever your on preferences in this matter may be, it's not a scientific decision, which was my point. Hence, scientists are neither qualified nor empowered to make that decision.
I am not going to explain again that we do not want a nation of slaves. I do not waste my time arguing with slavers.
Slaves is what you want to create, by denying these people the freedom to choose work, and instead putting them on welfare. You are the slaver.
It also moves money from the rich to the poor. Again, small words for you. They are all you can handle.
You keep claiming that, with no evidence. How is it supposed to move money "from the rich to the poor"? How is that supposed to work?
You increase the minimum wage regularly, it drives inflation regularly, the poor win and the rich pay. It's that simple.
Why would the rich be affected by inflation? They don't keep a lot of their wealth in cash or treasury bills, they keep it in actual property, either directly or as shareholders.
They are already not spending or investing it. That's why the rich are not the job creators. They sit on the money as if they would only get to go to heaven if they had more zeros in their bank account.
Of course the rich are predominantly investing their wealth; that's the only place you can put large amounts of wealth and the only place you get decent returns.
Are you really this fucking stupid or are you just a troll?
You mean like Ubuntu, iOS, OSX, and just about any other OS on the planet that links you into advertising networks and package repositories? If anything, Microsoft has been late to the spyware party.
Correct. That's because they are actually open standards.
And yet, Java was still a registered trademark.
That's only more evidence of Sun's duplicity, since they had promised to make Java an official, open standard, which would have meant giving up control of the trademark.
Then later they add "extensions" or changes that forces you to move to the Windows platform if you want to use the latest features which are only available on Windows.
It has never mattered to me what extensions Microsoft added to C, C++, or Python on Windows. Why would it matter to me what extensions they add to C# on Windows?
The OSP is limited to implementations to the extent that they conform to those specifications. This allows for conformance to be partial. So if an implementation follows the specification for some aspects, and deviates in other aspects, then the Convent Not to Sue applies only to the implementation's aspects which follow the specification.[3]
That's reasonable. It allows implementors to implement whatever they want of the spec. All it is saying that you can't just implement some other patented technology that's not part of.NET, call it part of your.NET implementation, and then claim protection under the covenant.
The devil is in the details. If Google had did to.NET what they did to Java, do you think they would have been covered?
Correct, they would have been covered. Microsoft might still have sued them over technologies not covered by the specifications, but, unlike Oracle, they couldn't have sued them for non-compliance with the specification.
Note that Android manufacturers are already paying Microsoft licensing fees for open source software that they are shipping, so using open source software doesn't protection you from patent claims.
Finally, any patents relevant to most of.NET are expired or soon expiring, so they don't matter anymore. In contrast, the licensing restrictions on Java are perpetual.
If you blindly believe Microsoft "made legal commitments not to assert any patents", then you are a fool.
I believe nothing "blindly". Objectively, the legal and patent situation surrounding.NET is much better than that surrounding Java.
OOXML is a lousy spec, but in what way is it nefarious or anticompetitive for Microsoft to define their own XML format, have it standardized by ECMA, ANSI, and ISO, and then comply with the RAND policy of those standards bodies? Keep in mind that's the same set of bodies and the same set of commitments that Sun refused to make.
just a couple degrees cooler and we had snowball earth, with ice sheets that extended south beyond new York city.
"Snowball earth" refers to a climate state more than half a billion years ago; global average temperatures weren't "a couple of degrees lower", they were -50C/-74F. What you actually seem to be referring to is the last glacial period (110000 to 15000 years before present) of the current ice age (5-7 million years ago continuing until the present). Temperatures were about 6C lower than they are now. We are currently in a warm period; without AGW, we'd be returning to that state again. Cold is bad. With AGW, we may avoid that fate.
a couple degrees the other way, and we're back in dinosaur land, with a tropical Antarctica, and seas 200+ feet above current levels.
Yes, and that would still be far preferable to the frozen wastelands that the glaciation cycle would return us to. Temperatures would be mild pole to pole, there would be more precipitation and fewer deserts, and plenty of new arable land would open up for people displaced by sea level rise. And sea level rise would be gradual enough (a thousand years or more) for human populations to adapt without even noticing.
3/4 of the worlds population lives in areas where they will be displaced by rising seas. that's 5 billion people. where are they supposed to go?
About 3 million Dutch are living below sea level and doing quite well. After WWII, West Germany accepted massive numbers of German returnees, is it doing poorly economically? Israel is built in an inhospitable country mostly from displaced people, is it hurting economically?
We can't stop sea level rise or climate change; it's already a done deal. So these people will have to deal with the consequences no matter what. And the best way of dealing with it is by helping the rest of the world develop economically as rapidly as possible. The only proposals on the table result in massive economic costs for only a slight slowdown.
you don't think, that's the problem.
No, you don't think, and that's your problem. You keep advocating action on climate change as if any action could stop it; it cannot.
and if you did, you wouldn't then have the gall to state that its the climate activists who are willing to sacrifice millions
I certainly do have that gall, because self-righteous pricks like you need to understand the harm you are advocating.
There's a train a coming. You're on the tracks. It's a long ways off. But you can see it. And people are telling you to get off the tracks.
That isn't what the IPCC says or the scientific consensus says. What the science actually says is that society will incur some significant costs $X from climate change 50-100 years ago, and that we could theoretically prevent that if we were able to institute massive economic changes that cost $Y now.
Your analogy is misleading because it assumes that $X is infinite (death) while $Y is small (getting off the track). But that's not what "the science" or the IPCC say. According to the IPCC, $X and $Y are comparable in magnitude and, neither of them is lethal, and each just amounts to a small cost relative to GDP.
To bring this down to a smaller scale, assume we're just talking about a family. What you're advocating is that your family spend $10000 right now so that your great-grandchildren in 80 years may avoid having to spend $20000 (in real dollars). To use your words, "you're an idiot". The rational thing to do is to leave the maximum amount of money you can to your grand children; instead of paying $10000 right now, if you just safely invest $1000 in the economy, your great-grandchildren will have $20000 to deal with whatever you fear.
I understand why you say that: Java and Qt are nice for GUI development from a programmer's perspective. But what counts with GUIs is how well they function for users, and java isn't doing too well there
That is bollocks. M$ did the embrace, extend, extinguish tactics with Java by "adding" unportable extensions. Java programs written for the MS platform where no longer 'compile once run everywhere':
Yes, that's what people do with open standards: they extend them and come up with their own implementations and enhancements.
hence Sun sued rightfully, both in legal as in moral sense.
Morally, Sun had been deceiving and defrauding the Java community for years at that point. And the fact that legally, Sun had a good chance of prevailing already told you that Sun had an iron grip on the language.
Where do you think open source software would be if C, C++, or the UNIX kernel couldn't have been functionally extended because AT&T had a perpetual monopoly on extending them?
Sure, if you have been in a coma for 20 years and just woken up, this change in position may surprise you. To the rest of us, it's been a pretty gradual development.
Ah, okay, so you accept the science, you just don't give a shit. As long as we are clear about that I don't think I need to comment any further.
I do give a shit. I think objectively, our best choice is to do nothing. Climate activists, on the other hand, are willing to sacrifice millions for self-aggrandizement.
That's pretty amusing considering.Net started because they got sued for forking Java, so they make a Java clean-room clone and went with that.
Sun had originally promised to make Java an ANSI/ISO standard, and they broke that promise, turning Java into a proprietary standard with an open source implementation. Sun had also promised to make Java a good platform for GUI applications, something else they utterly failed at. I think Microsoft was completely justified in doing what they were doing with Java, and Sun was confirming how dishonest and untrustworthy they were with their lawsuit.
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No ECMA/ISO/ANSI standard, Oracle controls the JCP process, no patent covenant comparable to Microsoft's. In addition, Sun/Oracle has a long history of threatening alternative implementations with legal action, so these legal issues are not theoretical.
It tells you exactly what would have happened, namely nothing. Microsoft couldn't have sued Google like Oracle sued Google.
No, the problem is that you are confusing multiple meanings of .NET. There is the open source .NET platform, a set of APIs that was created years ago and that is open and patent-unencumbered. That's like ANSI C with the C standard library. Then there is .NET as a Microsoft-proprietary platform. That includes the open source .NET platform, but is much larger. Microsoft adds new APIs and new functionality to that, and some of that is patented, just like Google adds proprietary and patented functionality to Android, and many companies add proprietary and patented functionality to C/C++ in C/C++ libraries. The additions Microsoft makes to the .NET platform now don't affect the legal status of the open source .NET platform because they are not part of it.
In any case, it's pointless to argue this. Java fanboys, Sun/Oracle shills, and deluded open source developers have badmouthed C# for so long that it has no chance. I just hope we can kill Java for good, because Java is both technically poor and a legal minefield, and then replace it with something else: Java must die. At this point, Swift and Go look like the best candidates to replace it.
That was my point and why I gave the example!
Most open source software that replicates some commercial function has been developed without contracts. Most of the time it has worked out just fine.
The situation with C#/.NET is actually better, because Microsoft's patent covenant is pretty reasonable, in particular to the dangerous terms Sun and Oracle have been offering.
I think C#/.NET is a lost cause at this point because the anti-Microsoft and pro-Oracle (aka pro-Java) forces have been too vociferous and have too much invested. It's a shame; FOSS would be much better off if Mono/C# had been adopted a decade ago. Maybe we can salvage things with Swift. However, as far as I'm concerned, Java must die.
So you are implying that because Bush started those programs, Clinton and Obama had license to expand those programs and murder and spy without any opposition? Sorry, I happen to disagree.
Did I say that? Did I imply that? No. I expect him to set a budget for climate change research overall, not look at individual proposals. Hopefully that's a budget that's a small fraction of the current budget. He can then leave it to the scientists to figure out how to reduce their spending by 80%. While he is at it, he might also eliminate the DOE and put the whatever remains of federally funded climate research under other departments.
You mean like trusting AT&T with Linux and C/C++?
Like trusting Sun/Oracle with Java?
You don't have to "trust" these companies, you have to make calculated tradeoffs and push the envelope.
If only they had shown that kind of backbone during the Obama years and made such a statement about any involvement of IBM in NSA surveillance, creation of massive financial and medical databases on US citizens, and drone killings.
They wanted a format that was as backwards compatible with their binary format as possible. Is that horrible? Sure. But it's nevertheless an open format.
And that's still a lot better than Sun/Oracle, who withdrew from the standards body altogether over the requirement for RAND licensing terms and took complete control over the specification and language (and doing a piss poor job at that).
So what do you program in?
All major platforms now have a (mostly) safe, compiled, garbage collected language, usually one of Java, C#, Swift, or Go. Maybe you don't need something like that, but lots of people do. Java is patent encumbered, owned by a litigious company, and a lousy design. Swift and Go are niche languages with limited libraries, no standards, and no clarity on the patent situation either. What does that leave?
You are misreading what that clause means. That clause simply means that Microsoft only grants you patents that are necessary for implementing the spec, no more and no less. That is exactly what such a covenant should look like. If you disagree, try to formulate a better version of the same clause.
I.e., Microsoft keeps creating new libraries for the .NET platform and creates patents for them. That's just like Google, Apple, IBM, Oracle, Facebook, and others do for C++, Java, Swift, and other platforms. Are you going to stop using C++ because Google writes patents related to new C++ libraries they create?
Yes, IBM incidentally went down the same route about a decade before Microsoft, from ultra-proprietary and litigious to open-source supporter.
Well, whatever your on preferences in this matter may be, it's not a scientific decision, which was my point. Hence, scientists are neither qualified nor empowered to make that decision.
Slaves is what you want to create, by denying these people the freedom to choose work, and instead putting them on welfare. You are the slaver.
You keep claiming that, with no evidence. How is it supposed to move money "from the rich to the poor"? How is that supposed to work?
Why would the rich be affected by inflation? They don't keep a lot of their wealth in cash or treasury bills, they keep it in actual property, either directly or as shareholders.
Of course the rich are predominantly investing their wealth; that's the only place you can put large amounts of wealth and the only place you get decent returns.
You should ask yourself that question.
You mean like Ubuntu, iOS, OSX, and just about any other OS on the planet that links you into advertising networks and package repositories? If anything, Microsoft has been late to the spyware party.
Correct. That's because they are actually open standards.
That's only more evidence of Sun's duplicity, since they had promised to make Java an official, open standard, which would have meant giving up control of the trademark.
How is calling your compiler "Visual J++" using Sun's trademark?
It has never mattered to me what extensions Microsoft added to C, C++, or Python on Windows. Why would it matter to me what extensions they add to C# on Windows?
The covenant is reasonable:
The OSP is limited to implementations to the extent that they conform to those specifications. This allows for conformance to be partial. So if an implementation follows the specification for some aspects, and deviates in other aspects, then the Convent Not to Sue applies only to the implementation's aspects which follow the specification.[3]
That's reasonable. It allows implementors to implement whatever they want of the spec. All it is saying that you can't just implement some other patented technology that's not part of .NET, call it part of your .NET implementation, and then claim protection under the covenant.
Correct, they would have been covered. Microsoft might still have sued them over technologies not covered by the specifications, but, unlike Oracle, they couldn't have sued them for non-compliance with the specification.
Note that Android manufacturers are already paying Microsoft licensing fees for open source software that they are shipping, so using open source software doesn't protection you from patent claims.
Finally, any patents relevant to most of .NET are expired or soon expiring, so they don't matter anymore. In contrast, the licensing restrictions on Java are perpetual.
If you blindly believe Microsoft "made legal commitments not to assert any patents", then you are a fool.
I believe nothing "blindly". Objectively, the legal and patent situation surrounding .NET is much better than that surrounding Java.
OOXML is a lousy spec, but in what way is it nefarious or anticompetitive for Microsoft to define their own XML format, have it standardized by ECMA, ANSI, and ISO, and then comply with the RAND policy of those standards bodies? Keep in mind that's the same set of bodies and the same set of commitments that Sun refused to make.
"Snowball earth" refers to a climate state more than half a billion years ago; global average temperatures weren't "a couple of degrees lower", they were -50C/-74F. What you actually seem to be referring to is the last glacial period (110000 to 15000 years before present) of the current ice age (5-7 million years ago continuing until the present). Temperatures were about 6C lower than they are now. We are currently in a warm period; without AGW, we'd be returning to that state again. Cold is bad. With AGW, we may avoid that fate.
Yes, and that would still be far preferable to the frozen wastelands that the glaciation cycle would return us to. Temperatures would be mild pole to pole, there would be more precipitation and fewer deserts, and plenty of new arable land would open up for people displaced by sea level rise. And sea level rise would be gradual enough (a thousand years or more) for human populations to adapt without even noticing.
About 3 million Dutch are living below sea level and doing quite well. After WWII, West Germany accepted massive numbers of German returnees, is it doing poorly economically? Israel is built in an inhospitable country mostly from displaced people, is it hurting economically?
We can't stop sea level rise or climate change; it's already a done deal. So these people will have to deal with the consequences no matter what. And the best way of dealing with it is by helping the rest of the world develop economically as rapidly as possible. The only proposals on the table result in massive economic costs for only a slight slowdown.
No, you don't think, and that's your problem. You keep advocating action on climate change as if any action could stop it; it cannot.
I certainly do have that gall, because self-righteous pricks like you need to understand the harm you are advocating.
That isn't what the IPCC says or the scientific consensus says. What the science actually says is that society will incur some significant costs $X from climate change 50-100 years ago, and that we could theoretically prevent that if we were able to institute massive economic changes that cost $Y now.
Your analogy is misleading because it assumes that $X is infinite (death) while $Y is small (getting off the track). But that's not what "the science" or the IPCC say. According to the IPCC, $X and $Y are comparable in magnitude and, neither of them is lethal, and each just amounts to a small cost relative to GDP.
To bring this down to a smaller scale, assume we're just talking about a family. What you're advocating is that your family spend $10000 right now so that your great-grandchildren in 80 years may avoid having to spend $20000 (in real dollars). To use your words, "you're an idiot". The rational thing to do is to leave the maximum amount of money you can to your grand children; instead of paying $10000 right now, if you just safely invest $1000 in the economy, your great-grandchildren will have $20000 to deal with whatever you fear.
And that's why the Java desktop has been such a smashing success?
I understand why you say that: Java and Qt are nice for GUI development from a programmer's perspective. But what counts with GUIs is how well they function for users, and java isn't doing too well there
Yes, that's what people do with open standards: they extend them and come up with their own implementations and enhancements.
Morally, Sun had been deceiving and defrauding the Java community for years at that point. And the fact that legally, Sun had a good chance of prevailing already told you that Sun had an iron grip on the language.
Where do you think open source software would be if C, C++, or the UNIX kernel couldn't have been functionally extended because AT&T had a perpetual monopoly on extending them?
Sure, if you have been in a coma for 20 years and just woken up, this change in position may surprise you. To the rest of us, it's been a pretty gradual development.
I do give a shit. I think objectively, our best choice is to do nothing. Climate activists, on the other hand, are willing to sacrifice millions for self-aggrandizement.
Sun had originally promised to make Java an ANSI/ISO standard, and they broke that promise, turning Java into a proprietary standard with an open source implementation. Sun had also promised to make Java a good platform for GUI applications, something else they utterly failed at. I think Microsoft was completely justified in doing what they were doing with Java, and Sun was confirming how dishonest and untrustworthy they were with their lawsuit.