Apple patenting Swift language features is relevant/interesting/worrying for FoC: https://forums.swift.org/t/apple-is-indeed-patenting-swift-features/19779

If you think this is indeed relevant/interesting/worrying, then please take the time and read the whole forum thread, specifically the responses from Swift Core Team members John McCall and Ted Kremenek.

I have. The implication of "implied licensing to the project because Apache2" is also the implication that they will enforce them against languages that are not Swift.

@duncanawoods As I made that mistake before: That you was meant as _anybody_; I didn’t want to imply that you didn’t read the whole thread.

@Stefan I don't think it should be hand-waved away like that. Sure, we know the circumstances these things typically get wielded e.g. tactical moves in the next Apple vs. X thermo-nuclear litigation. The problem is that most languages with traction are tied to platforms/companies so languages will be pawns in such fights and users will suffer. We also know the other case, when "good-times" end and the company goes on the offensive or sells IP to those that do. I do not believe any claims of defensiveness unless they are handed over to dedicated IP orgs that make such intentions transparent, iron-clad and completely prevents future aggression. We need to reject patent encumbered languages. IMHO it would be a great achievement of the FoC community to achieve a legal/IP consensus that makes collaboration on PL ideas legally safe and to the benefit of humanity not companies.

@duncanawoods What's your legal background?

ranty internet nobody 😄

I’d love to discuss that with somebody who knows US patent law, because that for sure would bring some interesting perspectives to the table. If it's just us two who don’t know much about it, we should probably do everyone a favor and not go deeper into it. ;-)

I don't find it appropriate for an ex-Apple dev evangelist for Swift to try and silence discussion of Apple patenting programming language design features.

Hmm, interesting. I didn’t think of it that way, but yeah, I guess I can see why such a narrative seems plausible. I was more trying to vouch for the people on the Swift team who I know personally — they would be the first to quit and work on something else if there was the smallest chance that Apple wasn’t committed to the right values.

Let us be friends ❤️ I don't want to impugn any individual either. I do think corporate structures e.g. incentives and inside views etc. do setup individuals like the swift devs to not always see things the same way as those outside.

I agree. And: friends! On your earlier point about legal/IP consensus to make collaboration on PL legally safe — do you have more thoughts on what you have in mind there?

It's not something I know about but maybe something like https://www.openinventionnetwork.com/ - patent non-aggression pact - commitment to publish research in open jounrals - effort to support interopable tooling standards e.g. language server, ast grammars etc. Right now, if I talked about an idea with a Swiftlang dev, is there legitimate concern of it being turned into an Apple patent? It's not just Apple of course e.g. what is the patent situation on C# these days? It always seemed grey but grey in the favour of MS. There is a potential for signatories to an org to make all that clear.

That just made me think about trust. There are so many giant’s shoulders we stand on, and have to, because we don’t have the capacity to do it all ourselves. What to do if the giant decides it doesn’t want us to stand on their shoulders? How do we pick the right shoulders? And do we need to minimize the stack of recursive shoulders? :-)

How is this not exactly the same as Facebook's React license where they basically said "if you use react you can never sue us". Isn't that the same here? Basically if you use Swift and Apple steals your patent for AR Lenses or something then if you sue Apple over the AR Lenses they get to revoke your right to use Swift. As for trust that reminds me of one of my first contracts. The guy I was negotiating with had "Mr. Nice Guy" on his business card. He was a PM at a 150 person company. There was something I was a little worried about in the contract but I told him I wasn't worried because I trusted him. His response was basically that the contract is not with him, it's with the company. He might not be around and the next person might be evil so put it in the contract. In other words you shouldn't look at this license as "Apple are good guys so it's safe". You should look at it as "If Apple turns bad how will this affect me". People leave for one reason or another and there's no promise the new people will have the same ideals or vision.