Faced with a mature market and leveling sales, many companies are looking to port their applications to new platforms. The problem is that these companies tend to underestimate the porting effort. According to some estimates, porting features without the aid of cross-platform tools could involve as much as 85 percent of the overall project.
Of course, several companies offer cross-platform solutions. Mainsoft, for example, licenses the source code to Windows from Microsoft and offers a cross-platform API called "MainWin" that's based on the Windows API. MainWin lets you recompile and run Windows code on UNIX platforms by placing a layer between the application and Xlib. While applications can run native, the licensing arrangement with Microsoft forces Mainsoft to charge hefty prices for the development environment, with additional costs for deployment.
Now there is an initiative within the European Computer Manufacturers Association (ECMA) that offers a less-expensive alternative. In December, the ECMA Technical Committee (TC) 37 voted on and passed a specification, called "APIW," that provides a common interface to the Windows API that is both platform independent and vendor neutral. The next step for the initiative is to submit the specification to ISO.
The APIW is confined to a select subset of Windows APIs that include the most commonly used interfaces, maintaining portability across platforms. Because APIW is a specification, it defines how features within the API should function. In essence, it defines the interface. Thus, an implementor can develop a layer that conforms to the interface, but does not require the source code to Windows. Some of the goals of the APIW are to fully document those Windows features that are included in the specification, to protect the investment in current software development, and to foster competition through multiple APIW implementations that offer a choice of language bindings. The bottom-line benefits are that developers get a universal API without built-in royalties or licensing fees.
But in a strange twist of fate, Microsoft is moving to block the proposed standard that would make the Windows API ubiquitous among software developers. Prior to the ECMA vote, Microsoft reportedly lobbied hard against the initiative, making a presentation to the TC 37 General Assembly on December 14. According to Hugh Lunardelli, Microsoft's manager of Open Systems and Standards, there is no market value or customer demand for APIW. Lunardelli cited a written statement from senior corporate attorney Daniel Laster that "Microsoft objects to the publication of the ECMA APIW standard and expressly reserves its intellectual property rights."
In the past, Microsoft has said that Windows applications will be able to migrate with Windows NT to other platforms, such as PowerPC. However, Microsoft has also instituted a licensing program called "Windows Interface Source Environment" (WISE). In this arrangement, a company can license the Windows source code to create either an API- or binary-compatible interface for either UNIX or the Macintosh. (Hmmm... what happened to OS/2?) Strangely, just four companies have made licensing arrangements with Microsoft. Mainsoft and Bristol Technology offer Windows-compatible SDKs (called "WISE SDKs"), while Insignia Solutions and Locus Computing provide "WISE Emulators" that will run off-the-shelf Windows software directly on the target platform.
It's understandable that Microsoft would want to maintain control over its API. Standards bodies are cumbersome and could slow innovation. But the underlying issue is that APIW could potentially unseat Windows as the dominant operating system. In the near term, APIW could detract from WISE, a program apparently designed to claim royalties on every Windows application running on a non-Wintel box. Either way, ECMA is proceeding with its submission to ISO in the near future. The question now is whether Microsoft can enforce its intellectual-property rights over an interface, a point ECMA has queried Microsoft on over a 16-month period. No doubt, the lawyers will be arguing this point for years to come.
Michael Floyd
executive editor