Ottawa, ONTARIO — (press release) — At the 2000 Ottawa Linux Symposium here, Transvirtual Technologies, Inc., developers of the award-winning Kaffe cross-platform development environment, today announced consolidation of its Kaffe implementations for desktop and embedded systems. In addition, Transvirtual announced plans to deliver the single Kaffe implementation as Open Source code under the GNU… General Public License (GPL) by the fourth quarter of this year.

“Transvirtual's Kaffe is already used and respected by tens of thousands of software developers,” said Michael Dortch, Senior Research Analyst with the Robert Frances Group, an information technology advisory service for business executives. “The consolidation of Transvirtual's desktop and embedded Kaffe implementations will ease application development and improve scalability, while its availability under the GNU GPL adds the power of developers worldwide to Transvirtual's considerable internal programming talent.”

“With Kaffe, we delivered the industry's first true 'run-anywhere' cross-platform development environment,” said Tim Wilkinson, founder and CEO of Transvirtual. “We are excited by the prospects created by consolidating our desktop and embedded Kaffe implementations and making them freely available as Open Source code.”

Kaffe and Open Source: Software Synergy

Kaffe, Transvirtual's award-winning, cross-platform environment, is a totally independent, “clean room” implementation of the PersonalJava 3.0 specification, requiring no source code licenses from Sun Microsystems. Kaffe is a full Java Virtual Machine written to the PersonalJava (JDK 1.3) specifications, and includes a full implementation of the PersonalJava Class Libraries, as well as integrated classes for handling graphics, file management and networking.

Kaffe is the only JVM to support technologies from both Sun and Microsoft, including Microsoft's extensions for Windows and Windows CE. Kaffe also supports Linux, Sun's Solaris and DOS operating environments, as well as all leading processors for desktop, handheld and embedded systems, including the growing range of Internet and information appliances appearing around the world. Kaffe is efficient, compact, easy to install and configure, and optimized for rapid application development and deployment.

By consolidating its desktop and embedded Kaffe implementations, Transvirtual will ensure that enhancements will be made and delivered consistently across the spectrum of platforms and environments supported by Kaffe. In addition, by making Kaffe available under a General Public License, Transvirtual will be able to leverage the efforts of tens of thousands of developers worldwide to add features and performance enhancements to Kaffe. To date, developers have downloaded more than 100,000 copies of the Open Source desktop Kaffe implementation from Transvirtual's Web site (at www.transvirtual.com), where the consolidated version and related information will soon be available.

About Transvirtual

Transvirtual Technologies, Inc., is a Berkeley, California corporation that provides multiple-platform solutions for embedded systems, Internet appliances, and desktop machines. Transvirtual's major customers include Compaq, Microsoft, and Schlumberger. Tim Wilkinson, Transvirtual's founder and CEO, was the original developer of Schlumberger's SmartCard. Transvirtual's flagship product, Kaffe, won the 1998 JavaWorld Editor's Choice Award for the Best Java Virtual Machine, beating both Microsoft and Sun. Over 100,000 copies of the free Open Source version of Kaffe have been downloaded from the Web. Kaffe is bundled with Red Hat and Debian's Linux distributions.

 
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