C was already implemented on several quite different machines and OSs, Unix was already being distributed on the PDP-11, but the portability of the whole system was new.
In some cases we've been building tools that are specific to Linux for the desktop, and they only work on Linux, but I see two major projects that are wildly, wildly successful: Mozilla and OpenOffice, and those two programs are cross platform.
I am greatly proud of the fact that 'Doom' is one of those things where everything that has a 32-bit processor has had 'Doom' run on it, and I think that's been one of the great aspects of having it be open source: having everything out there means that people have maintained that and kept it up to date.
It seems certain that much of the success of Unix follows from the readability, modifiability, and portability of its software.
If you want an application to be portable, you don't necessarily create an abstraction layer like a microkernel so much as you program intelligently.
If Microsoft ever does applications for Linux it means I've won.
Portability is for people who cannot write new programs.
Of course, all of the software I write runs on Linux; that's the beauty of standards, and of cross-platform code. I don't have to run your OS, and you don't have to run mine, and we can use the same applications anyway!
I view the JVM as just another architecture that Perl ought to be ported to. (That, and the Underwood typewriter...)
Yes, I definitely believe that it has some good cross-platform properties. Object orientation was one of the techniques I used to make Python platform independent.
None of our competitors have ever made two systems that run the same software.
The most important thing was the creation of a... a standard, where hundreds of companies build hardware that can all run the same software.
Java the language is almost irrelevant. It's the design of the Java Virtual Machine. And I've seen compilers for ML, compilers for Scheme, compilers for Ada, and they all work. Not many people use them, but it doesn't matter: they all work.
