Could someone clone MS's IL for another OS?

[neilh at scintilla.org.bbs]

> Could someone write a clone of MS's new intermediate compiler language to
> native code compiler in order to write Perl, Python, or Eiffel on
> Windows, compile it to IL, and then eventually native code compile it on
> some other OS platform?

   I think its likely Microsoft will publish enough documentation to make it
possible to write an IL VM for other systems. Microsoft may even make an IL
VM available for other systems with the most likely being MacOS. If this is
going to happen, I'd expect it to be announced at MacWorld this week.

   The question here is to what extent Microsoft wants to beat Java/Sun.
Widespread availability of IL VMs would help this goal, while still allowing
differentiation of the preferred platforms on the basis of which libraries
are available. Microsoft will also have a large lead in designing IL VMs so
will be able to ensure best perfromance is on those preferred platforms.
They can also win on effort applied - when competing with their Java VM
Microsoft achieved very good benchmarks.

> Does anyone think such a capability is a good idea?
> Does anyone think that someone will do this?

   Yes to both.

   Neil