From: Tim Hammerquist <tim@...>
Date: 2003-09-20T08:20:53+09:00
Subject: Re: fork not available?

Berger, Daniel graced us by uttering:
> I'd like to see fork() emulated someday in Ruby on Win32.
> Here's a link from the ActiveState web site that explains how
> they emulated fork in their Perl distro:
>
> http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/docs/ActivePerl/lib/Pod/perlfork.html

I noticed an interesting paragraph from that page (and your local
Perl docs, if any):

| Support for concurrent interpreters and the fork() emulation
| was implemented by ActiveState, with funding from Microsoft
| Corporation.

This show that, as much as M$ might prefer their own languages to
dominate, they can't deny the Perl market and are willing to, in
small or large part, support it at a personal loss.  The
pseudo-fork code for Perl is, of course, available with the rest
of the Perl source under the free (beer+speech) Artistic
License...

Of course it also shows us that all we'd need to have a third
party develop the Ruby+Win32 forking is to prove that ActiveState
can make enough money on commercial licenses by developing and
releasing ActiveRuby(TM) binaries...

Tim Hammerquist
-- 
Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes.
Art is knowing which ones to keep.
    -- Scott Adams