free SOM

E' quasi arrivato il momento di aprire una bella petizione online per chiedere l'apertura con licenza open source del SOM di OS/2 di IBM.
Ci ritroveremo cosi a programmare un'applicazione per SOM e visualizzarla nativamente in KDE o GNOME...

SOM (System Object Model) is a library packaging technology that enableslanguages to share class libraries regardless of the language they werewritten in. This ability to share class libraries between various objectoriented languages solves many interoperability and re-use problems betweenobject oriented and non object oriented languages as well.

Key characteristics of SOM in support of these key commercial requirementsinclude:

- the ability to create portable shrink wrapped binaries

- the ability to create class libraries in one language that can beaccessed and used by other languages

- the ability to subclass from binaries even if they were written ina different language

- the ability to add new methods and relocate existing methods withoutre-compilation of the application

- the ability to insert new classes into the inheritance hierarchy withoutrecompiling the application.

SOM provides an object model distinct from those contained in objectoriented programming languages yet does not interfere with the use of thosemodels in the same application that is using SOM. In addition, SOM canbe used with procedural programming languages thus providing an objectmodel for those languages that do not have one.

SOM consists of an Interface Definition Language (with an accompanyingcompiler), a run-time environment with procedure calls, and a set of enablingframeworks.

SOM is an IBM technology that is being licensed to other companies inanticipation of extending its benefits to heterogeneous environments. Inaddition, a number of language vendors are working on providing nativeSOM capability for their compilers.