Subject: Re: Free ? From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.no> Date: 1997/04/15 Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp Message-ID: <3070075118027408@naggum.no> * lvirden@cas.org | Is free better? I guess it depends on whether one wants to get the job | done or not. no. it depends on the commercial software you have seen and compare with. recall that most of the free software you see does not have commercial counterparts, and the "commercial" versions are bundled with something else, with _no_ incentive to make it outstanding. under such conditions, free software works so much better. (yeah, very few of the original SunOS 4.1.3 binaries run here, anymore. it's all GNU.) for fundamental parts of a computer (such as operating system and system utilities), free software is probably the only right thing, but large applications are a different story entirely. in particular, commercial Lisp systems far surpass the free ones in almost all respects. (the CMUCL's compiler's type inference engine is very good.) if you have never seen a commercial Lisp system, make the effort before you jump to conclusions. (make sure you get the Unix version when you compare Lisp systems, though.) #\Erik -- I'm no longer young enough to know everything.