On Thursday, 28 August 2014 at 17:34:21 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
On 8/28/2014 2:53 AM, "Jérôme M. Berger" wrote:
I should have said that in D it is used when declaring an
instance
(i.e. at the place of the instance declaration) whereas in the
patent it is used when declaring the type. For a patent
lawyer, this
will be enough to say that the patent is new.
Um,
alias immutable(char)[] string;
is declaring a type. It is not used in this case as a storage
class, and there is no instance being declared. String is
indeed a type.
Aliases are not really prior art either since they do not
allow
creating an immutable type without also creating the
corresponding
mutable type.
This seems to me to be reductio ad absurdum. And how does the
patent say an immutable T is to be created without saying T
anywhere?
PS: The above does not mean that I think the patent is valid
(as a
matter of fact I don't). It only means that the "immutable"
keyword
in D is not enough to invalidate it IMO.
It's more than immutable, you're right. D also has transitive
immunity, which is a feature of the patent, and also relaxed
immutability during construction, which is also a point in the
patent.
In fact, the patent looks like an explanation of how
immutability works in D.
This is why I don't believe in "coincidence". This could be
either an attempt to crush D or some people might have realized
that D's way of handling immutability is the way to go and they
want to own it (or both). Where I'm from this is called
"rip-off", "theft" or just "being a c**t".
H.S. Teoh:
"Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by
incompetence."
I never liked this quote. What appears to be outright
incompetence can more often than not be attributed to malice.
But I agree, we should take this issue seriously. Even if the
patent seems ridiculous, chances are that it will get through
(exactly because it is so ridiculous). We should start to raise
funds :-)
