[OT] Microsoft filled patent applications for scoped and immutable types

[Chris via Digitalmars-d]

On Monday, 1 September 2014 at 05:56:33 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
> On 8/31/2014 10:15 PM, Russel Winder via Digitalmars-d wrote:
>> I guess it must be a "keep patent lawyers in work" scheme.
>
> There's another aspect at work with this one. I'm a bit irked 
> that something Andrei and I came up with in 2007 is claimed by 
> others to have been invented 5 years later. A number of 
> features pioneered by D have been showing up in other 
> languages, and D has not been acknowledged.

I agree. I have had the feeling for a long time now that D is 
some sort of pariah among programming languages. Whatever D 
offers is never good enough, until one of the big languages rips 
it, then it's _the_ ultimate new thing!

> I'm happy to acknowledge ideas from other languages that have 
> made it into D, and it is right for other languages to 
> reciprocate.

Yeah, but it never happens, does it? I wonder is that sheer 
ignorance / carelessness or by design? Anyway, I think that D is 
not being taken seriously (at least officially), because it is 
not backed up / owned by one of the big players. It is entirely 
community driven, which is something big corporations hate, and 
many users get the (wrong) impression that D is half-baked and 
not reliable. So they rather put up with Java where they have to 
wait for useful features for years and are locked into rigid 
programming paradigms.

> What I don't intend to do is patent D's innovations. What D has 
> done is our gift to the programming community. I'm also glad 
> we're using github, as it is a fine way to document and 
> timestamp the provenance of D's features.

Good on you! But make sure the evidence does not disappear 
miraculously, if you get my drift.