Re: bytecode unification for scripting languages

[MJ Ray <markj@cloaked.freeserve.co.uk>]

Greg Pettyjohn <GregP@bsquare.com> writes:

> I will add still another good reason: Lots and lots and lots and
> lots of people are going to be using it. If you run on the MS VM, it
> is that much easier to get your language into the mainstream.

Apologies for my ignorance, but doesn't the patenting of parts of .net
mean that only Microsoft or people paying Microsoft patent fees will
ever be able to produce .net implementations?  Doesn't that make it a
fairly closed line of development?

I have nothing in particular against scheme being *able* to run on the
.net VM, but please don't abandon the rest of us.  

This is one of the things that worries me most about .net -- the
ability to close off an entire tranche of computing from non-licencees
of MS.  The other thing is the amount of distraction from the
important tasks that it's causing.