On Wed, 2006-03-29 at 11:59 +0200, Norbert Berzen wrote: > Yesterday, while doing some dumb fitness training, one question came > into my mind. What if microsoft decides not to support the native > executable (PE) format any longer? What if they say: "The one and only > executable file format we support is the CLR/CLI (PE) format".
Imagine Microsoft putting a bullet through its collective brain. That's what removing unmanaged support would do. In short, it would be the end of *every* unmanaged application -- Microsoft Office, SQLServer, PhotoShop, all internal business apps, EVERYTHING. It would *kill* Windows overnight, because the market isn't going to wait for EVERY piece of Win32 software to be re-written (never mind all those company-internal VB6 apps). Remember the point of .NET's excellent COM interop and DllImport functionality? To permit integration with existing code -- Microsoft doesn't intend to ever fully rewrite Office in managed code, there would be little benefit. The same is true for most other large pieces of software. Microsoft would have to be insane to even consider something like this, as it would remove most backward compatibility, effectively removing the existing software base. In short, this won't happen. Ever. On the bright side, you'd see Apple and Linux users rejoicing if this ever occurred, because it would instantly make more commercial software available on their platforms... - Jon _______________________________________________ Mono-list maillist - [email protected] http://lists.ximian.com/mailman/listinfo/mono-list
