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Why didn't Microsoft get sued for plagiarising Java when they made C#? ( For Techies Only )
Quora ^ | Chris Nash, Former game programmer, now real-world programmer

Posted on 03/16/2023 7:16:43 AM PDT by SeekAndFind

A few reasons.

First, Java was spearheaded by Sun Technologies, not Oracle. Sun was still an independent company at the time. Sun had already yelled at Microsoft for changing the Java implementation in Internet Explorer to make it faster for Windows machines.

It ended up killing Java applets completely. My feelings are they weren’t itching for another fight with the huge software giant.

Second, they didn’t copy Java’s API. That’s what Google did with Android, and that’s why Oracle is still suing them.

Microsoft borrowed a lot of ideas from Java (and C++) for their new language. If you compare the two APIs, you’ll see what I mean. C# shares a lot of syntax with Java, but the API is different.

You can’t copyright syntax and Sun couldn’t do anything about it. I don’t think they really even wanted to.

Third , Microsoft shot themselves in the foot with their initial .NET (and C#) rollout. They said it was portable, like Java, but only portable among different Windows operating systems.

* Using a Mac? Tough luck! .NET doesn’t run on Mac.

* Using Unix? Tough luck!

* Using Linux? Go suck an egg!

Java ran on all operating systems. Calling C# portable “among Windows operating systems” was a lame attempt to keep Windows the dominant business operating system.

Sun probably recognized Microsoft’s folly and just laughed.

Today, .NET and C# are available among nearly all operating systems like Java, but Java’s far more dominant and may be forever.

To recap, C# didn’t copy Java’s API. Sun didn’t have anything they could sue them over.

Update

There seems to be a lot of confusion on this topic. And Sun did sue Microsoft over Java. But they didn’t sue them for plagiarizing Java. They sued them for illegally “extending” it. Basically, they modified Java so it would run faster on Windows machines, which—according to Sun—destroyed the universality of Java.

But they didn’t sue Microsoft over plagiarizing Java.

Sun won, by the way.


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Computers/Internet
KEYWORDS: c; java; microsoft
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To: webheart

OS/2 was a joint venture between IMB and microsoft, that is why OS/2 can not be open sourced, because of the microsoft license’s, IMB finished OS/2 and released it. gates used the IBM venture to do windows NT. OS/2 does a better win/dos.

I use OS/2 today!! its still marketed today


41 posted on 03/16/2023 12:35:24 PM PDT by markman46 (engage brain before using keyboard!!!)
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To: ConservativeInPA

” Even if you had a standardized version of C++, you’ll have code that is MBED dependent and if you ported it to another platform it wouldn’t work.”

That’s exactly what the MBED development studio does. Dozens of targets. You select one and a tailored version of their enormous RTOS + peripheral support is produced. Compilations and linking is god-awful fast. It’s all done on a host computer the Github storage of the source code. An executable is downloaded to your PC and you download that via serial port (USB connection) to your target hardware that’s sitting beside you.

Fortunately the processor core is always Cortex so the compiler has only one target for the compiled code.


42 posted on 03/16/2023 3:14:06 PM PDT by cymbeline
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To: webheart
"Microsoft was and is always a monopolistic business."

And Apple isn't???

43 posted on 03/17/2023 2:07:39 PM PDT by Wonder Warthog (Not Responding to Seagull Snark)
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