Re: EOLAS ACQUIRES MILLSTONE INTERNET SOFTWARE PATENT

Steve Crocker ([email protected])
Tue, 22 Aug 1995 10:57:24 -0400

The earliest RFCs describe the idea of downloading programs to facilitate
interaction over the network. Two attempts to define an easy to implement
interpretable language were published, one called Decode-Encode Language
(DEL) by Jeff Rulifson, and one called Network Interchange Language (NIL)
by Michel Elie. In my opinion, this work foreshadowed JAVA, et al., and it
only now, with the appearance of JAVA, that the ideas described and
anticipated in those first days of planning for the Arpanet have finally
been realized.

There are, of course, a myriad of technical details involved in the design
of these various languages, and there may or may not be some novel ideas in
those details. However, in my opinion, the concept of downloading a
program in the middle of an interaction to facilitate the interaction or
integrate the operation of the remote and local machines was clearly
understood and documented in 1969.

Steve

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