Out of 6 languages recommended by the NSA, 4 are patended bvy multibillion comanies who can pull the plug on them at any time (and Oracle already tried that).
C# - PATENTED by Microsoft,
Go - PATENTED by Google
Java - PATENTED by Oracle, NOT FREE
Python - not too shabby
Rust - not too shabby
Swift - PATENTED by Apple
@sos MSFT has a community promise that waives the C# and CLI patents though. It's legally binding so they can't revoke it even if they wanted to. In a nutshell the promise says you can do whatever you want with the languages but not sue Microsoft.
@markuslatvala Not really. The waiver only applies to Mono codebase and only if it's used in it's entirety, from what I've seen.
Plus, maybe they cannot revoke them for current versions, but nothing stopping them from doing so for future iterations.
@markuslatvala @sos C# was part of the Open Specification Promise, but now c# is an ISO standard. https://www.iso.org/standard/75178.html
@darrel_miller @markuslatvala H.264 is an ISO standard and GUESS WHAT?
EDIT: If you didn't guess, H.264 is patented and even if you write your own codec from scratch you're still subject to fees.