> > The situation would change dramatically if say, a Microsoft, picked it up
> > and ran with it. But they wouldn't do it unless they had full control over
> > the language which the Haskell community wouldn't allow.
>
> Every popular language, except Java, is in some respect "public
> domain". The language definitions of C, C++, Modula-2, Oberon,
> Pearl, you name it, are all public domain and not under control of a
> single company but by a commission or a group of researchers. These
> languages have good public domain implementations as well. I do
> believe that a language must be public domain and have public domain
> implementations to gain success in the long run.
What about Visual Basic? Turbo Pascal / Borland Object Pascal /
Delphi? Intel x86 assembler? Adobe Postscript? All of these
languages are in the control of a single company.
> Being public
> domain makes a language accessible to everybody from students and
> hobbyists to large corporations. I know a company that works for
> military (NATO and the DoD) that changed from Ada to C++ solely
> because they could get the Gnu C++ compiler for free for all their
> supported platforms.
Umm... the GNU Ada compiler, GNAT, runs on all gcc platforms as far as
I'm aware...
> Few languages can do without commercial implementations, though,
> since there are companies that will not use a PD compiler for their
> work. We need the best of both worlds.
Agreed. But (unfortunately?) commercial control of a language does
not seem to hinder its popularity (Miranda excepted).
--KW 8-)
--
: Keith Wansbrough, MSc, BSc(Hons) (Auckland) -------------------------:
: PhD Student, Computing Science, University of Glasgow, Scotland. :
: Native of Antipodean Auckland, New Zealand: 174d47' E, 36d55' S. :
: http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~keithw/ mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] :
:----------------------------------------------------------------------:
