Friday, 17 June 2005

Avalon Lockdown

"If someone wanted to build an implementation of the WS- protocols that could talk to Indigo, they can use the public specs to build their own implementation. If however, someone wanted to clone Avalon or Indigo from top to bottom (that is, from APIs down to protocols) they'll probably want to approach Microsoft about licensing," a Microsoft spokeswoman told The Register.

So if you're a developer planning to base products on Avalon or Indigo, be aware that you're locking yourself to run on Microsoft platforms only, forever.


  1. If you develop products using Cocoa, please be aware that you're locking yourself to run on Apple platforms only, forever.

  2. Robert O'Callahan18 June 2005 at 22:18

    Not at all, Steve. If Cocoa turned into a super-popular platform, I can easily imagine people taking OpenStep and extending it with Cocoa compatibility and some binary magic to make it run all those Cocoa apps. Unlike the Microsoft quote, Apple has not indicated that they would threaten legal action against such an effort.

  3. Cocoa was "ported" to Windows in the late 90s ("Yellow Box for Windows"; Google it). Since Mac OS X on x86 has been kept up to date for years, I'd bet Yellow Box for Windows has been tracking the changes in Cocoa, too.
    Now whether a modern Yellow Box for Windows will ever be released, or whether one will have to go the GNUstep [] route, you still have options--and today, AIUI.