What are the dangers of a language that is "owned"? [closed]

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C# is owned by M开发者_运维知识库icrosoft and Java is owned by Sun/Oracle. What dangers does that really expose to the users of these languages? Has anyone felt their code was "owned"? Do projects like Mono help keep the "owners" honest?

Please do not make this a holy war of languages. I just want to know if it's rational to avoid such languages or if that's just paranoia. An interview with the inventor of C++ got me thinking, but I also want to balance his thoughts with the thoughts of the community as a whole.

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As compared to what? Since you put it in these terms, the original C and C++ languages are "owned" by Bell Labs.

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Java is not "Owned", it is open source. If you find a bug in it that you absolutely cannot deal with, you CAN fix it. (There are both open source and closed source implementations, however)

I don't know if you can get the source code to C#, but since Mono copied it there IS an open source for that as well.

I don't know if there is a second source for the .net libraries.

As for the actual "Dangers" (Which was your real question, after all), it would be that the company decides not to release updates any longer--if they do, will the language wither and die or will it take off on it's own? Java is in the process of transition from one of these states to another. Sorry, don't know about C#.

There is also the (Perceived) danger I mentioned earlier about--can you fix it if you hundred-million dollar company absolutely needs it fixed in order to continue.

This was a more significant problem twenty years ago, these days the fact is that if it's a good stable language, this isn't something you ever need to worry about.

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No such danger for C# language. It is an ISO standard. Formally it is owned by a committee. But Java is a trademark

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Getting up in the morning is risky, but that doesn't keep the world under the covers.

I feel like this is one of those acceptable risks. In Java's case, companies have used it for the last 15 years or so to their benefit.

What's the alternative? Developing and maintaining your own language so you own it? That's what SAP did. It seems to have worked out for them, but it'd be interesting to calculate the cost they've incurred.

Bjarne Stroustrup is a brilliant man, but let's not forget that he has biases. He isn't happy that Java eclipsed C++ as the primary object-oriented language when it came out. He's attributed it to Sun's marketing, not conceding that it might have improved on C++.

It's a good practice to try and spot biases on the part of any speaker to make sure you're not swallowing someone's view whole. This is one of those cases.

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If there are not two independent implementations, language is "Owned" and you are at the mercy of the vendor should he raise prices or can the product.

I don't like that.

EDIT: As often as not, you can count legally forkable codebases as two (the second is yourself).

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Aren't all languages owned by a person/company/standards body. The only way I can think of where it isn't really owned by anybody is if the person who made it is anonymous and also public domain

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hmm, well Xbox only supports C# for indie games, and no other platform supports it.

obviously the danger is that if you want to do multi platform code, you want the language supported by the most platforms, the more "owned" language is probably going to be supported by less platforms.

the only issue I have is support for the language, and how hard it is to convert from one to the other, for instance I would say c++ to c# is easier than the other way because of memory management.