Thus far our discussion has been entirely theoretical; we have demonstrated on paper that WAP is not viable, and that LEAP has all the characteristics necessary to be considered a viable alternative. However this is all academic until the protocols are implemented as software and deployed in real world systems.
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, we have created software implementations of the protocols for most common platforms. 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.
All of this software will be made publicly available in the form of free software in open-source format. At present, we have created the structures necessary to allow ready access and downloading of the software in binary form. Foundation libraries of LEAP protocol engines called the ``Open C Platform (OCP)'' are subject to the GNU Library General Public License and are available as open-source software.
The software is being made available at http://www.MailMeAnywhere.org/.
We expect to have the ESRO protocol engine software components subject to the GNU General Public License available at this location by September 2000. We expect the availability of the entire suite of open-source software implementations described above to be completed by December 2000.
As noted above, the initial emphasis of LEAP is on the mobile messaging application. Protocol engines are only a single component of a bigger picture; in order to provide complete solutions to the user it is necessary to integrate these protocols into other existing pieces of software. Fully-integrated solutions which combine LEAP with other open-source and free software packages such as qmail, sendmail, fetchmail will also be made available.
We invite those interested in using, enhancing, porting and integrating this software to join the relevant mailing lists at http://www.MailMeAnywhere.org/
We will also initially ``prime the pump'' by providing free subscriber services through ByNumber.net and ByName.net. This will provide initial support for the implementation of the protocols in end-user devices. Usage of the protocols among a sufficient number of user devices will then provide the motivation for usage among the message center systems.