On Sun, Jan 13, 2002 at 11:31:37AM +0800, Jerome Tan wrote: > > > > On Sun, Jan 13, 2002 at 08:44:13AM +0800, Rogelio M. Serrano Jr. wrote: > > > It is also their downfall. They are too tied down to the ia32 paltform. > > > We will not beat microsoft now. That will happen when ia32 loses > > > dominance. They are scrambling now to make sure that ia32 will dominate > > > > Quite the contrary, they're going to their CLR (Common Language Runtime) > > to ensure that the hardware doesn't matter. That's the whole idea, send > > around byte code instead of machine code. > > > Probably you mean language doesn't matter too? Common *Language* Runtime, > isn't it?
Language won't be as important, but hardware will be completely irrelevent. VB, C#, etc. all compile to CLR bytecode. When a new hardware platform comes along, you port the CLR (one program) to it and suddenly all this precompiled byte code just works. Same idea as Java, only because the host platform (i.e. Windows whatever) is consistent it should actually work. The open source world can meet the CLR on Linux or whatever, but at that point it'll be a lot like Java, i.e. it mostly works but not quite. It's also very likely that Microsoft will keep the internals of CLR an ever-changing secret (like the Office document formats) and leverage their control of that to stifle open source competition. If properly done, they could be harmed greatly by an open source CLR that lets us run Office native on Linux. Michael -- Michael Darrin Chaney [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.michaelchaney.com/ _ Philippine Linux Users Group. Web site and archives at http://plug.linux.org.ph To leave: send "unsubscribe" in the body to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To subscribe to the Linux Newbies' List: send "subscribe" in the body to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
