Subject: Re: bleeding money out of clispers From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.net> Date: Sun, 10 Jun 2001 17:10:31 GMT Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp Message-ID: <3201181827610888@naggum.net> * Lyn A Headley > Basically I want to offer money to help the financing, but only if > *others* are also willing to offer some money. I do not understand this attitude. If I want something, I put money into it. If I do not put enough money into it to make it viable, I would very much prefer to know this beforehand rather than in the bankruptcy hearing. Therefore, I require that my money not be _spent_ before there is enough financing to ensure that it is not wasted. In the absence of sufficient funds, I expect to get my money back. Responsible financing takes care of this kind of condition very easily. In fact, I have never _seen_ any endeavor where people are asked to put money into something to see if it might fly. Taking people's money on a known losing bet is known as fraud. My advice is this: Just put up the money. Show your own interest. Lead the pack. Require a certain amount before the project starts. Prepare to lose the money nonetheless. (I.e., do not give away money you need for basic necessities, regardless of the promised returns.) Those who are not quite as interested or are sitting on the fence waiting for someone to tell them what to do, will actually follow any random leader who steps forward. It is a mystifying human trait that some people will follow just about _any_ leader. But exploit this pack mentality and just go ahead and _be_ that leader. Not that I think multithreading for CLISP is a good idea that _anybody_ should be investing in, but it is their money, so feel free. _I_ think it is a fantastically bad idea and would discourage people from doing it for the very simple reason that I expect them to make it gratuitously incompatible with everything else, tout their superiority by virtue of being different, and thus make it _harder_ to talk about multithreading and multiprocessing in Common Lisp. Just like most everything else is "differently-abled" in CLISP, another different thing to take into account when discouraging people from using CLISP does not help get better Common Lisp environments. Thank whatever deities might be behind this all that CMUCL did it mostly right. If anything, help make CMUCL better and smaller and everything. Better yet, work on _applications_ in Common Lisp and show that Lisp is viable as a real language, not one of those language that are only fun making compilers for. #:Erik -- Travel is a meat thing.