The object technology field has been fraught with format wars that have stifled wide spread adoption of any one particular technology. While language wars have existed since the beginning of time, the attention of most of the software industry has shifted from language debates to the component and distributed object battlefields. While it is difficult to predict which (if any) technology will dominate component software or distributed computing, a fair amount of common ground can be found if one is willing to "put down the sword" and view how each of the various camps solves the problems at hand. In that spirit, this talk will present a unified view of component software based on the common ideas shared by the dominant component technologies, identifying the best (and worst) aspects of the current state-of-the-practice in component development.