This work is partially supported by FAPESP (Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo), grants 95/2091-3 for Alexandre Oliva and 96/1532-9 for LSD-IC-UNICAMP (Laboratório de Sistemas Distribuídos, Instituto de Computação, Universidade Estadual de Campinas). Additional support is provided by CNPq (Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico), for the PRONEX programme and for a PhD scholarship for Alexandre Oliva.
Islene Calciolari Garcia has helped us very much in reviewing and improving this paper. She also made important contributions to the architecture of Guaraná.
Douglas C. Schmidt, from Washington University, St. Louis, has provided us with very useful suggestions for the final version of this paper.
Special thanks to Tim Wilkinson, for having started the development of Kaffe OpenVM and having released it as free software.