Terry:

> Here's a naive question about JVM/AVM:
>
> Instead of creating a new AVM, is technically and
> politically feasible to extend the JVM "standard" to add
> the capabilities we'd like to see in an AVM?

Considering how often the JVM "standard" appears to be
updated - apparently to add new features - it shouldn't be
impossible to get some useful extension into the JVM.

There is one significant "political" problem, which is that
Sun is controlling the JVM _and_ are strong supporters of
the programming language Java. This means that it is
unlikely that we can talk Sun into extending the JVM with
something that benefits Ada programmers but not Java
programmers.

> I'm worried that a separate AVM would go nowhere if it's
> just targeted at the Ada niche market.

Agreed. And despite all the bad things we can say about a
"standard" being in the hands of a single corporation, Sun
seems slightly more willing to play by the rules than
certain other big players on the web. If we try to launch
YAVM [1] on the web it is likely to benefit a certain big
player in the game and not Ada.

Jacob

1) Yet Another Virtual Machine
--
"han skriver det aldrig så ondt som det er ment"