Hey, just curious about something. Are computer languages something that can be developed in themselves and do they offer any opportunity for gaining financial income from their very creation and desirability or is a computer language something that is difficult to protect?

In other words can anybody come along and make their own version of Mr Ed's supa-dupa program language X?

Anyone got thoughts or history on this?

It is not very likely we need any new languages.
Look at these links:
http://rosettacode.org/wiki/Category:Programming_Languages
http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/

On Rosetta you have 483 languages and a lot of tasks to compare.
Some are good for computing like Fortran and some are good for logics like Prolog.
On the next link you can see that some code is much faster than other.
So speed is about both language and code.
If you are good at making fast code it could be a way to make money.
But sooner or later someone will copy your code....

Thanks Pelle for your reply. I knew I was going to get a reply that there was no real need for any new languages but my question is primarily about the aspect of protection. Also speed is not really the question either though you have referred to that as being a way to make money which thank you was trying to tie it in.

I'm mostly interested in your last line. That somebody can openly copy the idea even if it is new. So really there is no protection for new ideas when it comes to making a new programming language?