From owner-freebsd-hackers Thu Feb 20 17:25:38 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) id RAA24019 for hackers-outgoing; Thu, 20 Feb 1997 17:25:38 -0800 (PST) Received: from phaeton.artisoft.com (phaeton.Artisoft.COM [198.17.250.50]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id RAA24014 for ; Thu, 20 Feb 1997 17:25:34 -0800 (PST) Received: (from terry@localhost) by phaeton.artisoft.com (8.6.11/8.6.9) id SAA00718; Thu, 20 Feb 1997 18:22:41 -0700 From: Terry Lambert Message-Id: <199702210122.SAA00718@phaeton.artisoft.com> Subject: Re: Windows95: what you don't know, you must reinvent To: msmith@atrad.adelaide.edu.au (Michael Smith) Date: Thu, 20 Feb 1997 18:22:41 -0700 (MST) Cc: terry@lambert.org, msmith@atrad.adelaide.edu.au, jamie@inna.net, toneil@visigenic.com, jfieber@indiana.edu, hackers@freebsd.org In-Reply-To: <199702210021.KAA22121@genesis.atrad.adelaide.edu.au> from "Michael Smith" at Feb 21, 97 10:51:51 am X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-hackers@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk > > The ABI documentation is fairly public; there are a number of European > > companies that have it; so does Sun, so does DEC. There are a *huge* > > number of books that have it. > > Aha. And which book(s) should we trust? (cf. "vaguely accurate" above). "Inside COM" Dale Rogerson Microsoft Press ISBN 1-57231-349-8 US $34.99 "Inside OLE" Kraig Brockschmidt Microsoft Press <> See also: http://www.microsoft.com/intdev/sdk/docs/com/comintro.htm http://www.sagus.com/prod-i~1/net-comp/dcom/index.htm http://www.microsoft.com/oledev/olemkt/oledcom/dcomspec.txt > > As to funding, are you asking if I'm willing to work on this? Well, > > I'm willing to do the COM implementation, which is the underlying > > technology for DirectX, ActiveX, etc., assuming that FreeBSD ever > > switches to ELF. > > No, I meant that for all your output capacity, you're not going to be > able to write all of this. To get it done, as you've previously > observed, requires a funded organisation that will encourage people to > write code that they might not have for mere fun. Ergo, funding. I don't know about that. I think it would be fun. Are you referring to my statements about WINE? WINE was uninteresting as of Fall 1994, after the release of WIN32... so yes, you'd have to pay me to work on WINE, especially if you wanted to put the code under GPL or some other restrictive license and destroy my ability to use my own code later for some commercial gain or other. Supporting COM, by itself, and DCOM, in particular, doesn't require that you support all of WIN32. DCOM requires DCE RPC, and implementing the protocol documented in the IETF specification given by the last URL, above. THere is significant value in allowing the location of DCOM comonents on non-Microsoft platforms. Microsoft recognized this themselves -- the second URL is for Software AG, a company that has been contracted by Microsoft to implement COM and DCOM on non-MS platforms (including Linux but not including FreeBSD -- Linux is ELF and COM requires ELF for MS DLL ABI compatability). The URL is for their US site. In any case, I'd prefer the design, if any, of a FreeBSD COM/DCOM capability *not* preclude implementation of a full WIN32 ABI at some later date. No sense in shooting off your own foot. Regards, Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers.