The Inter-Language Unification system (ILU) is a multi-language object
interface system.  The object interfaces provided by ILU hide
implementation distinctions between different languages, between
different address spaces, and between operating system types.  ILU can
be used to build multi-lingual object-oriented libraries ("class
libraries") with well-specified language-independent interfaces.  It
can also be used to implement distributed systems.  It can also be
used to define and document interfaces between the modules of
non-distributed programs.  ILU interfaces can be specified in either
the OMG's IDL language, or in ILU's Interface Specification Language,
which allows extensions to the CORBA spec.  Programming languages
supported in 2.0alpha12 are ANSI C, Common Lisp, Java, and Python;
rough Guile Scheme and C++ support is also present.  Additional ILU
support for Perl is freely available from outside sources.  Operating
systems supported in 2.0alpha12 are all Windows platforms with Win32
and WinSock, and all UNIX platforms with BSD sockets and minimal POSIX
compliance.  2.0alpha12 supports interoperability with ONC RPC
services, OMG CORBA services, World Wide Web HTTP services, and XNS
Courier services.  ``Plug-in'' extensibility is provided for RPC
message formats, message transport schemes, URL schemes, accounting
and authorization identity types, threading and event loop processing,
and various other things.  ILU is provided free for unrestricted use.

FreeBSD port notes:
- I enabled http protocol support by default.
- Official ILU patches are not fetched from PARC, but I hold a proven
  snapshot at one of my own sites.
- configure --bindir/--mandir doesn't work with current ILU version.
  I make symbolic links to ${PREFIX}/{bin,man}.
- The FreeBSD port builds shareds libs for C libraries.
- jdk-1.1 for FreeBSD works, but is disabled by default because the
  FreeBSD jdk is still in aout object format.