[Info-vax] BridgeWorks

[John Dallman]

In article <v7pn6l$1ig94$2 at dont-email.me>, ldo at nz.invalid (Lawrence
D'Oliveiro) wrote:

> *From:* Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo at nz.invalid>
> *Date:* Wed, 24 Jul 2024 01:59:49 -0000 (UTC)
> 
> On Tue, 23 Jul 2024 20:16:40 -0400, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
> 
> > If you look at third party COM components used by VB6 and VBS 
> > back in the late 90's and early 00's, then most of it are gone.
> 
> If they were open-source, at least someone else could take over 
> development/maintenance after the original creators have gone 
> bust/given up.
> 
> Of course, trying to do open-source on top of an inherently 
> proprietary platform does pose its own challenges.

Sure does. As an Intel engineer said to me: "COM is not only a weird
meta-API designed to contort your code into forms where you'd have to
re-write from scratch to run it on anything else. It does that job fine,
but it also has positive features." 

Writing COM components was a /lot/ harder than consuming them. Microsoft
decided to replace it with .NET, over twenty years ago. They tried to
bring it back in WinRT, but that did not achieve significant acceptance
or market share, and is dead. 

John