Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

SoylentNews is powered by your submissions, so send in your scoop. Only 9 submissions in the queue.

Apple Patents Programming Language Feature

posted by martyb on Monday January 28 2019, @05:30AM   Printer-friendly
from the Copywrong dept.

Apple's mobile phone language Swift has some sort of "optionals chaining" that Apple finds novel enough to patent.

From the discussion, it appears Apple is intentionally using an Apache 2 license to ensure that access to this feature remains freely available. (Insert obligatory IANAL disclaimer.) Any Soylentils care to weigh in?

https://forums.swift.org/t/apple-is-indeed-patenting-swift-features/19779

Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Apple Patents Programming Language Feature | Log In/Create an Account | Top | 19 comments | Search Discussion
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.

  • (Score: 3, Informative) by coolgopher on Monday January 28 2019, @07:13AM (5 children)

    by coolgopher (1157) on Monday January 28 2019, @07:13AM (#792916)

    Save nagiviation operator [wikipedia.org]. Syntactic sugar.

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   +1  
       Informative=1, Total=1
    Extra 'Informative' Modifier   0  
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  
    Total Score:   3  

  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by zocalo on Monday January 28 2019, @08:13AM

    by zocalo (302) on Monday January 28 2019, @08:13AM (#792926)
    Because prior art and/or a really dumb "idea" ever stopped Apple (amongst others) from applying for a patent before. Or the USPTO from granting it, for that matter. Or perhaps we're supposed to be grateful because they put it under a more permissive license before some other patent abusing bottom-feeder got there first?
    --
    UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!

  • (Score: 2) by opinionated_science on Monday January 28 2019, @03:18PM (1 child)

    by opinionated_science (4031) on Monday January 28 2019, @03:18PM (#793019)

    this looks a *really* common logic expression - what *exactly* is the patent for in swift?

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 29 2019, @12:37AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 29 2019, @12:37AM (#793335)

    Sounds like the SQL Coelesce operator, which is part of the SQL standard I believe.

  • (Score: 2) by darkfeline on Tuesday January 29 2019, @07:44PM

    by darkfeline (1030) on Tuesday January 29 2019, @07:44PM (#793700) Homepage

    Ah, just a Maybe monad. However, I don't trust any patent employees to recognize a binary operator if it was shoved up their ass, let alone prior art.

    --
    Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!