isolated, stand-alone hosts, workstations, PCs are "out", the current Web is
just the advent of inter-networked devices
HW versatility - just the sky is the limit (smartcards, phones, PDAs,
internet terminals, settop boxes, embedded controllers, workstations,
cars, aircrafts?, space crafts ??)
most of these systems have one thing in common: nothing
HW may have a short life cycle - writing a development system that is used
just for a single application is way too expensive! ("gcc vs. MUA", smartcard
example)
strong need for a common development / runtime environment
if it is going to be Java, it has to be:
Portable
Kaffe has a reasonably small source tree (<1 MB for a given target system),
well separated target-specific components (thread-, system call- interfaces)
Scalable
Kaffe can be easily configured to use/omit: JIT/interpreter, JNI, math,
zip/jar support, native threads, (Type 3) stand-alone AWTs, ..
