Looks like Peter is having fun extending the SSCLI.  My fear is that this is where the fun really begins.  What happens when the next version of the SSCLI comes out?  Does Peter get the "fun" of porting all of his enhancements to each new release?  What about people who want to build upon Peter's work?  Or people who grow to depend on these features and then start looking for a commercial version?

Truth be told, more interesting to me than the technical details of the CLI are the social dynamics.  I have a basic grasp of the community models that surround GPL and BSD.  It will be interesting to see how and if the SSL addresses these issues.

  9:09:40 PM    

WebServices are like elephants.

When Dave says that Java and .NET hardly show up, he's got the elephant by the tail.  In the world of deployed clients environments upon which user interfaces like weblog clients are written, neither language has much penetration at this time.

When a company I never heard of named Wingfoot publishes interop results against various servers, Frontier is omitted from the list.  My theory?  It's a lot easier to explain the omission of Frontier than the interop failure that would be produced when passing such exotic types as booleans.  Simply by participating in the interop activities (the only investment required is access to the internet), Wingfoot achieves a much larger perspective.

I've said it before, and I will say it again.  If interoperability is important to you, first look here.  Pick a server from the first table, pick a client from the second table, and look at the results before you proceed.  It will save you a lot of headaches.

  4:51:49 PM    

Jon Udell: Java may have arrived late to the Web services party.  Grrr.  There are plenty of Java implementations.  Many are very good.  Some have been postively groundbreaking.

  7:57:23 AM