Subject: Re: Multiple LISP's? From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.net> Date: Wed, 26 Sep 2001 23:12:53 GMT Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp Message-ID: <3210534772293141@naggum.net> * tfb@whirlwind.OCF.Berkeley.EDU (Thomas F. Burdick) > Okay, but you'd still need it to ship with a free CL, because I can't > imagine any C++ programmer wanting to buy a commercial CL just to run > Emacs, especially if s/he could just use the old Elisp-based one. It would probably not be a commercial product based on the commercial Common Lisps. I would argue that there is so much marketing value in an Emacs running on a Commercial Lisp that is downloadable over the Net that it would far outweigh the usefulness of, say, a free Linux trial edition. > Plus, as far as I know, CLISP is the only CL that's approximately as > portable as GNU/X Emacs. I do not think it is useful to aim for maximal portability from day 1. > So the first step would be to beef up CLISP to around commercial quality. Well, you cannot do that without the demand and a serious competition to catch up with. Large free projects die when they have no cometitor, even though most of the propaganda for Open Source and the like is that people share their efforts. Linux succeeds so well because many very good and very smart people hate Microsoft's hegemony so much they want to beat it into a pulp. Take way Microsoft, and you take away so much of the "fuel" for Linux's and Open Source development that people will realize that it was not for anything else they __actually did it. Good thing there will be yet a few years before they croak. /// -- Why did that stupid George W. Bush turn to Christian fundamentalism to fight Islamic fundamentalism? Why use terms like "crusade", which only invokes fear of a repetition of that disgraceful period of Christianity with its _sustained_ terrorist attacks on Islam? He is _such_ an idiot.