Thus far in The LEAP Manifesto our discussion has been largely theoretical; in previous articles we have demonstrated on paper that WAP is not viable [9], and that LEAP has all the characteristics necessary to be considered a viable alternative [7]. However this is all academic until the protocols are implemented as software and deployed in real world systems. In this article we describe our strategy for accomplishing this goal.
The key elements of our strategy are that (1) we have created software implementations of the protocols for most common platforms, and (2) this software will be made publicly available in the form of free software in open-source format.
In order for the LEAP protocols to become widely used, they must be implemented in the form of software solutions that are readily available for deployment by end-users. To this end, protocol engines have been implemented in the form of portable code which has been ported to a variety of platforms. On the device side, software has been implemented for pagers and cell-phones; for hand-held PCs and Palm Pilot (Palm OS, Windows CE, Palm PC); for Windows 98, Windows 95, and Windows NT; and for Pine (UNIX, Windows, DOS). On the message center side, software has been implemented for Solaris, Linux and NT.