Why MS-extensions?

[Dirk Grunwald]

TW> Essentially we wanted to provide a true Open Source Java virtual
TW> machine and class libraries which would support the two versions
TW> of Java we currently have to deal with - one is Sun's Java, the
TW> other, whether you like it or not, is Microsoft's Java.  By
--

At PLDI, Steve Lucco of Microsoft Research demonstrated a non-java JIT
running a version of Word. He said that the JIT can translate to
native code at 10-12 MByte/s -- Word was jit'd in 1/4 of a
second. It's faster to JIT than to page. Earlier papers from Choulsa
software (concerning the omniware product) demonstrated performance
within 8% of an optimized application for a particular host across
a set of applications.

Reading

http://www.microsoft.com/PressPass/press/1999/Jun99/InnovationPR.htm

(particularly the portion about "Common Executable Format") may lead
you to believe that the Linux/Java community has more important things
to worry about than whether TVT has sold out the public Java effort
(which, frankly, I doubt).

Dirk Grunwald
visiting Compaq-WRL from Univ. of Colorado
and not speaking for either