I will present several short topics that cover major issues from 10 miles high.
Short background to the agreement
SUN provided several major stepping stones in the march forward within the computer science/industry Microsoft saw this and had to backtrack to get out of what had become (becoming) suns world, thus the agreement. Otherwise Microsoft would be tied up in legal battles for the next 15 years and needed to be free. Given this Microsoft could work with SUN and gain some semblance of control.
The whole area and major industry discussions about thin and thick clients is a tempest in a tea pot. The short answer is:
Given the “right technology” everyone can chose the optimum balance between thin and thick clients.
Why don’t we have the “right technology” Short answer
The one who controls this technology controls the “Computer1” (see foot note for background lead).
Worst case scenario (agreement does not work) Microsoft takes over the Web GUI by dumping JavaScript, replacing it with it’s own “browser” scripting language. AND MORE…
Related sub topics, Universal GUI, 3270 al la 2005, Web GUI==All GUIs!!!
The whole area and major industry discussions about Web Services, REST/SOAP, HTTP/TCP etc all boil down to the adoption of the new UNIVERSAL API. We are not there yet.
GRID technology, the all forms of distributed processing all are an aspect of the “Computer” as described in footnote one.
All these API discussions boil down to a set of solutions adjusting to the “connection speed” whether it is called a bus or the Web.
Microsoft had developed the best API ever OLE, COM, DCOM all had solved the issues of Component Composition at least with in the PC industry.
Then Java comes along and offers an alternate solution. OLE/COM/DCOM are broken in one swoop.
See the Small Talk language which combined messaging in a language.
Major refactoring is triggered as a response to the new choices offered in the new API.
Worst case scenario. Microsoft can dominate thus replacing OLE/COM/DCOM with another proprietary API.
Text becomes king. The collapse of the old AI paradigm, NLP and SGML at the same time made text king. HTML beat the pants off SGML, SGML comes back with XML to save their butts. XML becomes the ASCII of the new century, thus making the need for NPL more distant.
IBM clung to IBCDIC for years, XML became king over night
JAVA as a language is not important, Java as a “Web enabler” is very important. Java forced the computer industry to see what was obvious in other circles. The process Code-Compile-Link was obsolete. There is no mystery here; this development was driven by the tremendous increase in CPU speed.
The “Libraries” and “API” made famous by Apple and Java were the real paradigm shift. The libraries were the glue that made webetizing a reality. As the level of complexity increased these libraries became the new “level” of development. The holy grail of “Component Software” while not reachable through the API, could be approached by supplying large libraries.
Microsoft sees this and betters JAVA with NET. Notice that they did not come with a language but NET, which was the real strength (Web) masked as a language
JAVA as a language is not important, Java as a “machine code” is very important.
Again driven by the tremendous increase in CPU speed, machine code is replaced by a virtual machine.
Microsoft sees this and betters JAVA with NET.
The tremendous growth of Open Source and industry standards is not an accident; it is driven by the need for a universal Code Library. Open source replaces Apple’s, Microsoft’s, Sun’s, everyone’s proprietary Code Libraries.
The bottom line is that learning these libraries had become a necessity and learning so many proprietary “libraries” was impossible. Thus open source filled this need. There are many other aspects of open source that I am not addressing here, but this need for a universal Code library was the driving force.
Many of the buzz words of today are acronyms for the present candidates for the universal GUI, API, ASCII, Language, Machine Code and library. As the industry battles to control these changes the users and developers struggle to keep up.
These six forces all combine in a major paradigm shift that is manifested in the rapid changes we see. The power of these six Universals in the form of libraries, APIs, Language XML, etc is what the Cooperation Agreement is an attempt to handle.
More to come.......
Keith Elkin
1 Back ground: The Web is the computer
Finally the message is getting through — the Web is becoming a single, shared infrastructure for collaborative computing, and that changes the nature of software for ever.