Which technology(/ies) to use?

Hi all,

I'm going to be creating a web application that is going to be commercially viable. So try to keep source code for the business logic (at a minimum) compiled away from view.

I'm after ideas for a technology/set of technologies to use.

Ideally the technologies would:

-- Allow me to compile the source code for all (or, if not all, the business logic code) of the application into DLL files or whatever.

-- Be cross-platform? If thats impossible, then WINNT is just fine.

Please do not say .NET. I'm not going down that route.

So far, I've used VB and compiled an ActiveX DLL with some of the logic. This works, but is there a more modern, perhaps free alternative apart from .NET that would solve my dilemma?

Cheers,
Bob

Don't listen to this, you don't want to hear it:

If you are using a client-server app running on windows machines, I'd use NET dll's written with some CLR capable language on the server and probably make it a NET app on the client too.