http://www.tunes.org/Review/Languages.html

My comments below the sentences:

  Common LISP

  LISP

         Common LISP is a dialect of the LISP family of languages. See the
         according information below.

So much is true.

  Description

         Common LISP is the result of a standardization effort by Lisp
         vendors started with the commercialization of LISP in the early 80s.

Is that sentence true? Commercial Lisp systems were available earlier.
Who started the the standardization effort? There were lot's
of universities involved.

         Because it strived toward backward compatibility with existing Lisp
         systems, the result is a huge monolithic ANSI standard language,
         with hundreds of built-in constructs for a megabyte worth of run-time
         system (not talking about add-on modules).

Common Lisp is a huge monolithic ANSI standard language because it
"strived toward backward compatibility with existing Lisp systems"?
This sentence does not make sense to me.

Compared to existing Lisp systems it was even a *simplification*.

         However, the advantages of programming in Common LISP cannot
         be overestimated: everything a programmer usually needs is in the
         library,

Which is wrong. Common Lisp has nothing identifyable as a "library". Several
things one usually needs are not in Common Lisp (GUI, threads, FFI,
CLOS streams, ...).

         the object system is (quite) well integrated with the type
         system

This is debatable.

         and the condition system (which is unique on its own).

Yeah, what about the condition system? The Lisp machine had a condition
system before - can't be that unique.

         Greenspun's Tenth Rule of Programming states that "any sufficiently
         complicated C or Fortran program contains an ad hoc
         informally-specified bug-ridden slow implementation of half of
         Common Lisp".

Nice anecdote. Doesn't help, though.  

  Books about Common LISP

         For many years, the de facto Common Lisp standard has been
         `Common Lisp: the Language' (CLtL), edited by Guy Steele. The
         (current) second edition (CLtL2) is available in electronic form,
         among others (in the States) from Carnegie Mellon University, as
         well as (in France) from Supelec
         The Common Lisp HyperSpec is the definitive ANSI standard made

Kent sure would have to say something about the wording above.

         available as hypertext from Harlequin (download or browse)
         Franz has a searchable archive of their own electronic version of the
         standard.
         ...

  Free Implementations of CommonLISP

                CMU CL 18b is a deadly fast free compiler for
                CommonLISP.

CMU CL "is" not a compiler - it has a compiler. The compiler of
CMU CL is "python".

I'd say CMU CL is fast for some areas. Slow for others
(CLOS comes to my mind).

                Bruno Haible's CLISP is a portable and compact
                implementation of CommonLISP written in C and using
                bytecode. Does not implement the full CLOS MOP.

                The following two are not free software, but have binaries
                usable free of cost for non-commercial purpose:

                Franz Inc. sells its commercial system Allegro CommonLISP
                on most platforms. Version 5.0 of ACL for Linux is available
                free of charge for download.

"Free" for non-commercial use with a time limited license.

                Harlequin sells its commercial system LispWorks and Liquid
                Common LISP (bought from the dead Lucid). The personal
                edition for Windows can be downloaded free of charge.

The Personal Edition is nice, but crippled.

  Free software packages written in Common LISP

                CL-HTTP, the Common Lisp Hypermedia Server, is the
                most configurable web server ever.

On what base is this judgement being made? Did I miss the web
server configurability comparison?

                Closure is the dual of the above, a web client written in CL.

We are in the early stages here...

                Mockmma: a Common Lisp package and libraries that
                implement a symbolic math language compatible with
                Mathematica(tm)

Ever tried Mockmma?

  Critique

                See Generic critique for LISP languages

Sigh. Left as an exercise to the fearless reader...

                Pros

                    1.It is an ANSI standard.

Sure - but why is it a pro? Could also be a "Cons".

                    2.Both interpreters and compilers of good quality are
                      available, and new ones are easy to design, making
                      development easy, and portability quite good.

I'd never underestimate the effort to design and implement
a Common Lisp system.

                    3.It has a most advanced object system with generic
                      functions and multiple dispatch (CLOS), a unique
                      feature about widely implemented languages.
                    4.The object system (CLOS) has got most advanced
                      reflective features through a Meta-Object Protocol
                      (MOP)
                    5.Functional programming allows good factorization
                      of programs, so that added features take very little
                      space as compared to non-functional programs.

??? What space? Runtime? Compile time? Source? What is very little?

                    6.It has a powerful standardized macro system
                    7.It has got a package system.
                    8.It has got a powerful library of builtin features.
                    9.You can declare types to achieve very efficient
                      compiled code.
Largely depends on the compiler.

                Cons

                    1.the standard has got too many legacy features
                      nobody uses.

Who has made a survey? Where is the reference?

                    2.many essential features for a modern language are
                      not standardized (notably threads), and how it is
                      implemented (or not) on each implementation varies.

Can you really standardize them across different operating systems?

                    3.The object system's semantics does too many things
                      dynamically at run-time.

Really? Broad claim with no discussion why things are the way they are.

                    4.The Object and Meta-Object system is too much
                      based on side-effects
???
                    5.Though today's machines have more than enough
                      memory to run CL (which was not the case in the
                      early days of CL), CL still takes too much space to
                      be used in embedded environments.

See -> spacecrafts and robots.

                    6.The macro system does not have as clean semantics
                      as it should.

What is he talking about? Are there serious problems with
the *semantics* of the Common Lisp macro system?

                    7.its module system offers no security at all.

Common Lisp has "real" module system to speak of.

                    8.The too many builtin features are not orthogonal
                      enough.

Ask people which one we should delete...

                    9.There is no standard way by which the system
                      would statically check declared types and infer new
                      ones as a tool for enforcing static invariants and
                      tracking bugs.

There is not even a standard for a Lisp "system"...

  you're insane, Francois-Rene Rideau.  end of discussion.

 Common Lisp has no "real" module system to speak of.

    Erik>   you're insane, Francois-Rene Rideau.  end of discussion.

I disagree. I know François-René (aka Faré) Rideau personnally and he
is not insane. I do agree he might have non-classical ideas (some of
which I share with him).

I leave up to the readers to take any conclusions about Erik Naggum's
arrogant attitude.

(and I did'nt found any personnal attacks -against Erik in particular-
in Faré postings)

  someone who is unable to see the difference between living in a country
  with a cast system and an almighty rulers, which is an inescapable and
  universal condition, and choosing to deal with something who has
  something to offer, is clearly so out of his mind that he has but two
  options to be respected: to commit himself or to retract the insanity.

| I leave up to the readers to take any conclusions about Erik Naggum's
| arrogant attitude.

  how cute.

| (and I did'nt found any personnal attacks -against Erik in particular-
| in Faré postings)

  I think accusing people of wanting dictatorship and feudalism because
  they don't agree with some person's idea of what freedom entails is a
  very fundamental personal attack.  obviously you think it's perfectly
  legitimate to accuse people of such things without consequence, so I'll
  leave it to the readers to decide how to deal with people who gang up on
  other debaters to accuse them of such things.

BTW, what is the software equivalent of a metaphor?

  do you seriously believe that I didn't see it as a metaphor?

  perhaps you don't understand what a metaphor is.  it is a rhetoric device
  to communicate _several_ levels of similarity between otherwise disjoint
  and dissimilar phenomena, and not just any similarity, but _essential_
  similarities.  you can't choose just a few similarities, and ignore the
  fact that what you compare to has other qualities and pretend they don't
  matter.  all methaphors break down at some point, because the phenomena
  are not in fact as similar as the metaphor tries to communicate that they
  are.  when a metaphor breaks down before it has had a chance to show its
  function, it is a bad metaphor.  when a metaphor is so rabidly dissimilar
  from anything reasonable associated with the other phenomenon, in this
  case the use of force and power, when the whole concept of contract and
  business is based on the premise of freedom of action and absence of
  force and power, the metaphor is no longer a metaphor, it is as good a
  rhetoric device as comparing someone's argument to something Hitler said
  -- regardless of whether he actually said it, which is no excuse at all.

  I'm reminded of the kind of people who are clearly inept at communication
  but who claim to be have been _ironic_ as soon as someone tries to take
  them seriously and struggle to understand what they try to say.

  there is no doubt that you consider vendors an evil force that cannot be
  controlled except by the means required to oust "almighty rulers": guns.
  that may be true for you, since you obviously can't argue your case, but
  it is a very strong argument for not talking to you again until and
  unless you prove that you are able to understand such differences.

It's predictable because the profit motive is fundamentally at odds with
quality.  You lose money when you try to increase quality past the point
of diminishing returns, which, by definition, is the point where the
majority of your customers stop caring.  And most people have pretty
low standards.  The only way to get better than the least common
denominator is to find a motivation other than money, whether it's
status, an artistic passion, or simply an innate desire to do the Right
Thing.

* Erann Gat
| I don't know what planet you're living on,

  I didn't know there were any alternatives, but I'll gladly yield to your
  superior experience.

| the people who brought us MS-DOS were definitely not content with mere
| name recognition and status among their peers.

  ignorance of the MS-DOS success story is beginning to become a problem,
  but I thought it was hard for anyone here to be completely clueless.
  what made MS-DOS a success was its hackability.  yes, you read that
  right.  if you don't believe me, go back to the computer magazines of the
  early eighties and read about hijacking system calls, installing device
  drivers, faking networks, getting "undelete" to work because the stupid
  file system only nuked the first byte of a file's name, but left the
  index blocks intact, etc, etc.  people who did this stuff talked among
  their peers, and got a whole lot of name recognition.  the only guy who
  really did make money on this was Peter Norton with his Norton Utilities.

  no source was ever necessary, by the way.  people could read assembly
  language back then, and it was written in assembly language, anyway.

| Microsoft got where it is precisely because Bill Gates is the good
| businessman you wish other computer scientists would be.

  *puke*  _you_ really must be from a different planet.  Bill Gates is the
  single most dishonest and despicable man on the planet, not because he's
  rich, which is a function of stupid people who continue to buy from him
  and that's their fault, not his, but because he cannot be trusted at all,
  and he keeps rewriting history to make himself _so_ good, when in fact he
  began by lying through his teeth to the Altair guy, and that lie told
  young Bill Gates at an impressionable age that only suckers are honest.
  he also stole computer time from Harvard and got away with it, which is
  also important in someone's formative years.  he's nothing but a crook.

  I hope no person ever will emulate what made him successful: fraudulent
  marketing and pie-in-the-sky promises that he never kept.  he's not
  decent and upright like Coca-Cola Company who sell an image but make
  people pay for a basically worthless softdrink.  Bill Gates capitalizes
  on people's hopes for the future by making sure that he never gives
  anyone enough, because that'll make them stop wanting to buy the next
  version.  it should be enough to mention the "success" of the early
  Windows operating system for people who aren't just visiting from an
  alien planet and pronounce their judgment in a total vacuum of knowledge
  of history.  the stability of the Windows API should be evidence enough
  for those whose memory cells only hold a single years' worth of changes.

| It rankles Bill severely that people think Microsoft isn't innovative.

  ha!  obviously not enough to make it innovative, which isn't _that_ hard.

| It's predictable because the profit motive is fundamentally at odds with
| quality.

  come again?  on this planet, this actually translates to "quality is
  fundamentally at odds with what people are willing to well pay for".

| You lose money when you try to increase quality past the point of
| diminishing returns, which, by definition, is the point where the
| majority of your customers stop caring.

  this and the above taken together must mean that "quality" is inherently
  meaningless until you _pass_ the point of diminishing returns, and this
  means (through your correct definition) that quality is _defined_ as that
  which the majority doesn't care about.

  well, doh, if quality is _defined_ to be more than anyone is willing to
  pay for, of course it isn't profitable to make anything of "quality".

  please reconsider your definitions.  it isn't your view of the profit
  motive that is at odds with reality, it's the stupid and arrogant belief
  that all people want to pay for is non-quality products.

| And most people have pretty low
| standards.  The only way to get better than the least common denominator
| is to find a motivation other than money, whether it's status, an
| artistic passion, or simply an innate desire to do the Right Thing.

  it must be hard on an alien on a tourist visa, but here on earth, we have
  this concept of _different_ markets, each with its local value of the
  least common denominator, because each market addresses different people
  with different needs.

  the mass market is _not_ the only market.  the only thing we can say for
  sure in this business about those who believe that is that Bill Gates
  profits even more by having as many people disregard every other market.

  but I gotta give Bill Gates this: not since Joseph Göbbels has any one
  man been able to lead so many people right into such a disastrous future.
  (keep in mind that I admire Joseph Göbbels for his work and his insight
  into good propaganda, which virtually every marketing person on earth
  employ: he was the first propaganda minister to understand that you can
  accomplish more through entertainment than with information, but I still
  think it's truly horrible that the West had to invent modern marketing
  just as it destroyed a nation and caused the deaths of millions of
  people, but there is no doubt about it: withour Joseph Göbbels' efforts
  in the last few weeks of the war to keep up the spirits of the people and
  to exploit their last remnants of a belief in a better future, just like
  Bill Gates keeps doing, a tremendous amount of suffering could easily
  have been avoided.)

Best Regards,

  |...|
  >   [Bill Gates] also stole computer time from Harvard and got away with it
  |...|

This makes me mildly curious---is there any publicly available
information on the Internet about this which gives more details?

Vassil Nikolov.  (See header for additional contact information.)
  Abaci lignei --- programmatici ferrei.

Here's an alternative theory:  MS-DOS succeeded because the IBM PC
succeeded, and the IBM PC succeeded because business people, largely
ignorant of technology but with deep pockets, trusted IBM.  People
did not buy DOS because it was being hacked, but because they
wanted to buy IBM PC's and Bill Gates shrewdly saw to it that if you
wanted to buy a PC you had no choice but to buy DOS to go along with it.
People hacked DOS not because it was easy but because they saw business
opportunities in remedying DOS's deficiencies.

Now, on what basis do you claim that my theory is so implausible that
I am "completely clueless" for not immediately recognizing your theory
to be the One True Explanation of the success of MS-DOS?

C++ is satisfactory.  Common Lisp is excellent.  Which one are more
people willing to pay for?

  actually, it does.  if you had been visiting this planet earlier, you
  would have seen the small computer magazines that had loads and loads of
  details on how things worked and how it could be exploited.  heck, I even
  have a few disks, copyright 1987 and 1991 by Dave Williams, called DOSREF
  2.0, which contains a _wealth_ of information, much more than I got out
  of the Linux sources and documentation in equal reading time.

| And just because all the hackers *got* was name recognition does not
| imply that that is all they *wanted*.

  no, that's certainly right.  the early MS-DOS world was also the biggest
  contributor to the _shareware_ culture, where people got free software
  with some functional restrictions and then paid other people some trifle
  amount of money for the real thing.  some people got rich off of this, in
  particular Peter Norton, which I even actually _mentioned_ in my reply,
  but most people just got enough money to keep having fun doing it.
  (which is much better than what Free Software is doing, anyway.)

| And just because MS-DOS was hacked a lot it certainly does not follow
| that MS-DOS's commercial success was a *result* of this hacking.

  yes, it does.  what made MS-DOS a success at all was that people were
  talking about all _over_ the place.  it was obviously useful on the new
  fancy machines of the day, but it was so hideously crippled and useless
  that every user _had_ to talk to his friends to be able to use it, and
  they were, lo and behold, able to supply all kinds of nifty tools.  this
  is how you build a community of users, and it this community of young
  people who had gotten themselves familiar with the Microsoft version of
  CP/M, basically, who grew up and became influential in some particular
  segments of our industry.  without these people, the fate of MS-DOS would
  have been that of the Amiga, which also had its share of devotees, but
  which didn't reach (un)critical mass.

| Here's an alternative theory:  MS-DOS succeeded because the IBM PC
| succeeded, and the IBM PC succeeded because business people, largely
| ignorant of technology but with deep pockets, trusted IBM.  People did
| not buy DOS because it was being hacked, but because they wanted to buy
| IBM PC's and Bill Gates shrewdly saw to it that if you wanted to buy a PC
| you had no choice but to buy DOS to go along with it.  People hacked DOS
| not because it was easy but because they saw business opportunities in
| remedying DOS's deficiencies.

  there _were_ no business opportunities at first.  people in suits didn't
  buy hacker's tools -- if the machines were bought by suits, they were
  used as the terminals they were intended by IBM to be, but that is NOT
  what made the PC a success.  you don't see business opportunities fixing
  broken things _until_ you have hacked it enough to see that it is indeed
  fixable.  somehow, people had to figure out a way to fix these things,
  and those were not people in suits and ties who trusted IBM.  I know this
  very well -- I got my own first computer in 1979 (not an IBM PC, but an
  Exidy Sorcerer), and basically grew up on the University computing center
  computers (DEC-10s) and joined clubs who had fun with real computers, but
  a bunch of people about my age and older got IBM PC's or even better
  machines, like the Apricot, but that came a little later, I think.  these
  guys didn't trust IBM any more than any other company, probably less.
  they studied our machines like we all did at the time.  heck, I got my
  high school to buy an AIM-65 for me back in 1978 so I could play with
  scheduling rooms and teachers and classes (I didn't know how hard it was
  supposed to be, so I just did it).  and the kind of stuff people were
  figuring out about the 6502 and the Commodore and stuff.  I tell you:
  this stuff took off because millions of pages of computer magazines had
  stuff that young aspiring nerds could have fun toying with.  Microsoft
  has also (correctly, marketingwise) targeted the home, and not primarily
  the offices, because they did understand that people will want to use the
  same machine at home and at the office, but it's a lot harder to make
  them take their office machine home if it's a fancy mainframe terminal.
  Microsoft _still_ believes that the home is where the decisions are made.

| Now, on what basis do you claim that my theory is so implausible that I
| am "completely clueless" for not immediately recognizing your theory to
| be the One True Explanation of the success of MS-DOS?

  gee, _that_ is a useful argument!  I'm not sure how stupid you are, but I
  have never seen anyone but idiots use the "One True X" argument, for any
  value of X.  if you have a personal problem reading explanations that you
  somehow think somebody else believes is elevated to divine doctrine, see
  a shrink, don't bother any other people with your problems, OK?  however,
  I must assume now that you have as your main agenda to _disprove_ what
  you stupidly believe is held to be One True Explanations, and will refuse
  to listen to it, no matter the argument, instead of trying to provide
  useful input.  sheesh.

| I believe that being innovative is extraordinarily difficult.  In my
| experience it is hard for people to even *recognize* a true innovation
| except in hindsight, let alone come up with one themselves.

  the problem is that you can't grow huge if you are good at innovating and
  once you grow big enough that you have all the money and all the people
  that could make just about any good thinker innovative, you're so deep in
  organizational quagmire and a culture of just getting stuff out the door
  that you can't afford to be innovative no matter how much money you have.
  Microsoft is not the only company to have run into that particular fate.

| >   on this planet, this actually translates to "quality is fundamentally
| >   at odds with what people are willing to pay well for".
|
| Yes, that's exactly what I meant.  Most people are not willing (or not
| able) to pay for quality.  Most people don't even know how to tell the
| difference between high quality and low quality.

  this is your fundamental view of people, but not a fact of nature: it is
  in fact wrong.  (and before you crank up the One True X bullshit again:
  it is obviously possible to ascertain that something is false without
  even having a clue what is actually correct.)  the reasons you think it's
  right are quite interesting, however: it isn't low quality that people
  buy, it's fun factors, image, coolness, and it is intended to be thrown
  away because it's basically a marketing gimmick.  high quality comes with
  lower fun factors, it takes longer to get to market, is less cool and has
  a very different image in most cases, such as conservativeness and family
  values like prudence and taking good care of things.  however, the kind
  of serious market research that companies who actually want to stay in
  business conduct to learn more about their customers do show that people
  don't buy the cheap nifty thing the _second_ time they buy the same
  thing, but instead evaluate whether they need it, and if they do, buy
  much higher quality products.  people do get mad when things break in
  their hands, but that never keeps them away from fun and cool stuff.

  now, if you really are a visiting alien, which I'm beginning to suspect
  for real, you would not see this in the extremely high profile marketing
  channels like TV and catalogs and such, but you would find that most
  people over 25 (used to be 30) don't buy into the same kind of craze.
  young people don't wnat quality, they want cool.  mature people know what
  money is worth and don't want to waste it on crap, but they aren't even
  reachable through the same channels that sell nifty crap to young people.

  in a culture that looks to youth as if it were the only part of life
  worth living, it is understandable that young people don't think people
  in general want high quality and endurance and other qualities, but it's
  an amazing fact (to some) that mature people have a lot of money and use
  it well.  to others, it's the bloody obvious.

  you talk about people who trust IBM and have deep pockets and who fit the
  mature person model, yet you don't understand that these people are the
  _last_ to buy crap twice.  that's why Bill Gates has to be so darn smug
  about how he's improving and innovating and making the _next_ version be
  as good as a completely new version that you'll buy because it's fun and
  new and all that.

| C++ is satisfactory.  Common Lisp is excellent.  Which one are more
| people willing to pay for?

  C++ isn't satisfactory anymore.  it has lost its coolness and fun factor.
  some companies nearly croaked on their C++ "investment", like Borland,
  and we might never learn whether they recovered their losses on C++ or on
  other products, but people have not been paying for C++ per se.  they
  have been paying for the ability to program Windows.  I know a whole lot
  of programmers all over the world, and very, very few of them have any
  sort of _appreciation_ for C++.  people are strongly dissatisfied with
  low quality, and deeply frustrated that they can't get out of it.  those
  who can, rejoice.  I have had four people call me in the past week and
  tell me they were _so_ happy that I had argued against C and C++ and
  given them free CD's with Allegro CL on to try and play with.  they just
  didn't _know_ about any alternatives, because it isn't marketed on the
  radio in the middle of techno and dance music programs, targeted at the
  same people that Joe Camel got a restraining order for talking to.

| This is not a belief, it is an empirical observation.  I wish things were
| different.

======

Apart from that, I would like to take up one other thing. You wrote:

Let us take as an (admittedly somewhat farfetched) example a modern
nuclear power plant, which is running under a computerized control
system, supervised, of course, by human operators, but essentially
relying upon the flawless running of a real-time computer system and
corresponding software.

Now, imagine that this setup was based on a less than perfect system
delivered by, oh, let's say, a certain Redmond-based company...
Would you like to be a next-door neighbour of that particular plant ?

Or, to take less drastic examples, factories of the process industry,
where the production is expected to run continously, and where unexpected
downtime could cost the company a very real amount of <insert currency unit>
every minute.

Or let us talk about infrastructure: How about the electrical power grid
serving New York City going down on average once a week, because the
computerized control system is less than perfectly stable.

The two points I want to make here, are:

1. That your description of operating systems and programming languages
   as "infrastructure" and therefore a mass-market, "good enough for
   the punters" phenomenon, is quite a distance removed from the complete
   picture.

2. That infrastructure in most (no, *all*) cases actually need to be of
   quite a bit better quality than the elevated crap that is emanating from
   the sewers of Redmond, Wa.

Apart from the points mentioned above you may be right...

-akr

An attempt to get this thread back into technial discussion, even
Lisp-related :-)

I think we have to seperate three basic kind of source access:

- give source to people who want it, based on some conditions, but
  don't allow them to redistribute the modified version freely, and
  don't guarantee that everyone will get the license. This is what Sun
  does with its Java products and probably with the Staroffice suite.

- give source to everyone and don't care what they do. BSD license,
  public domain (CMUCL).

- give source out and try to enforce distributing developed versions.
  GPL.

People seem to fear that the two latter options will produce too much
junk software.

They prefer the first model, because it doesn't let out software
packages that aren't verified to be good, but on the other hand, it
allows serious users to find and fix bugs, to understand code that
isn't properly documented and even extend the software for their own
needs.

Eric, Kent, I would welcome a quick notice whether this is an
appropriate summary of your optinions.

I disagree with this view.

Reasons:

1)

The junk free software package that are out aren't usually not derived
from sources that were once under real development control, they're
home-grown by inexperienced programmers.

Example: If you look at what became out of the BSD4.4 sources that are
licensed under model 2, you will see that they in fact lead to three
seperate free projects, FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD. But if you look
under the hood, you'll see that everyone of them has a clear direction
that seperates it from the others and -more important- that the code
quality is generally excellent.

The first really free BSD derivate was 386BSD. The original author
misdeveloped it (simplification). If it was under license model 1,
free BSD systems would have died. It way under model 2 and people took
the sources and made something better, without producing uncontrolled
junk.

Example: I might be biased, but I also see the development of CMUCL
after CMU dropped the project in a very positive light. There is just
one project, although people would be free to branch as much as they
would like. Only two people have the authority to actually modify the
code. All other people ask them to commit their changes and so far no
problems arose.

2)

Commercial companies have shown a long history of producing inferiour,
not superiour versions of existing software as it develops.

In general, software degenerates in that it is developed to be easier
to use in first place, but that serious users won't get the
productivity increase one should expect from really digging into a
package. The increasing instability of commercial software (can you
say windows) is just one example. Look at SPSS and its newer windows
versions.

I'm afraid that the advocates of the first license model in this group
are mislead by the fact that Lisp companies usually don't fall into
this trap, because they have no hope to make money from stupid users.

That doesn't change the fact that the class of software packages that
suffer from this phaenomenon is so large that even most of us can't
avoid touching it.

In my opinion, source code that might be taken away and branched from
the development of the original author is much more useful. Practice
has shown - and I can add more examples that those above - that this
option will be used only when nothing else helps. People have proven
that they make good use of this model.

Under the first license model, a tool I use might be taken away from
me (by dropping it or misdeveloping it). I only rely on tools that
can't be taken away from me. I learn rather slow and custumize highly,
loosing a tool would be a serious problem for me.

I'd like to add that I can understand your concerns when I look at the
casual users. In fact, they choose software on very weak measures and
there would be a real danger that people's bad choices push the worse
of two development branches and the better one dies.

But -and I think that's the reason why your opinions differ from mine-
in practice there are no developers who make bad branches of free
software, so the users can't choose the worse.

Just for example, though, my feelings are not anything at all to do
with junk software.  I believe there will always be junk software and
(as long as you don't use it) it's probably healthy that it be there.

My feelings are largely based on the issue of incentive.  Free
software makes no incentive to create things.  I am a creative person.
If you tell me I can't make money creating software, I'll create
something else that can make money.  My goal in life is FIRST to feed
myself and give myself independent personal autonomy of choice in my
life.  Once I'm independently wealthy (and I won't get there with free
software) and don't have an employer to tell me what to do, I'll be
happy to do things for the public good as I see it.  (But even then, I
probably wouldn't give things away.  Because people who receive free
things, whether food or software, don't understand the value of it.
I'd rather contribute to education, for example.  And no, I don't
think having a heap of software in your house means you can educate
yourself any more than I think having a gun and a target means you
don't need education in how to shoot.)

-andy made a "bad" granola bar consumption choice today

  yes, but not directly.  my argument has been that source access works
  against creating more dynamic and adaptable software, which is what
  people really need, but they settle for the best they can get in the
  static software world, which is source access.  and for a while, source
  access will give people better software than the first dynamic software
  they can find will appear to be, especially in user interface gimmicks
  and in scale of deployment, which is why the software that we will wind
  up having after a few years will be less dynamic than what the dynamic
  world has today, and invent new and probably stupid ways to be dynamic
  along the way.

  it seems, however, that people argue against my position based on the
  belief that I fear that the free software that will be produced will be
  of low quality in its _own_ realm.  that is not the issue for me at all,
  which I tried to communicate right up there in the Subject header.  my
  problem is that the best quality static software will remain less dynamic
  than even low quality dynamic software is, and by encouraging source code
  access, the dynamic properties won't evolve in static software, because
  it will be easier to fix and recompile than to make the software more
  adaptable to begin with.

| The first really free BSD derivate was 386BSD.  The original author
| misdeveloped it (simplification).  If it was under license model 1, free
| BSD systems would have died.

  this is not a certainty, but I concede it _is_ a possibility with not
  insignificant probability.  the fear that projects will die seems greatly
  exaggerated to me, and leads people to rush to conclusions because they
  want to "save the source".  (I'm reminded of environmentalists who don't
  manage to care about larger issues than some particular thing that gets a
  lot of attention.)

| Commercial companies have shown a long history of producing inferiour,
| not superiour versions of existing software as it develops.

  commercial companies are somewhat like human races -- they are much more
  diverse within the race than they are if you compare races to races.
  those who make claims about whole races are generally knocked down for
  it, but those who make broad and generalized claims about huge groups of
  people along other axes appear not even to notice.  I'm opposed to broad
  generalizations along _any_ irrelevant axis.

  commercial companies have varied so much in what they have produced that
  I completely fail to see the value of such general statements.  there is
  ample evidence to support the contradictory conclusion, too, but for some
  reason that evidence is disregarded.  this smacks of an agenda that wants
  to hide relevant facts.

| In general, software degenerates in that it is developed to be easier to
| use in first place, but that serious users won't get the productivity
| increase one should expect from really digging into a package.  The
| increasing instability of commercial software (can you say windows) is
| just one example.  Look at SPSS and its newer windows versions.

  but Microsoft profits greatly from the instability and the upgrade-mania.
  no other vendor in the software industry has exploited this property of
  evolving software in a purely destructive manner for anybody but itself.
  the sorry fact is that _anything_ that runs under Windows will rot in a
  few years because Microsoft wants to rake in billions of dollars from all
  the doofuses who think upgrading is going to solve all the problems that
  Microsoft created for them in the first place.  witness how people are
  not at all understanding that Microsoft actively supports the spread of
  viruses and hostile software on their platform.  all the evidence shows
  that Microsoft _actively_ creates new venues for virus producers to win
  and for Microsoft to _appear_ responsive to these "criminals" who cause
  Microsoft to earn lots and lots of money from people who fear that they
  will be lost at sea if they don't upgrade.  the reason I don't use any
  Microsoft products is not that it wouldn't be cool to join the gang and
  exchange Word documents by e-mail and all that fun stuff, it's that I
  don't want to be held hostage by my own past decisions in the future.

| I'm afraid that the advocates of the first license model in this group
| are mislead by the fact that Lisp companies usually don't fall into
| this trap, because they have no hope to make money from stupid users.

  and I think you're misled by the Microsoft horror story.  as I have said
  many times, I think the current embracement of Open Source is a reaction
  to Microsoft's criminal conduct, and little else.  I also think it will
  succeed in exposing what a fraudulent operation Microsoft really is, but
  the primary way to do that is to produce software that people can invest
  in and keep running for years and years.  so far, Open Source suffers
  from the same problem that Microsoftish software does: it does not reach
  closure and stability.  _novelty_ is what motivates people in that camp,
  too, not actual innovation.  real innovative people leave good enough
  alone, while novelty-seekers don't.

| That doesn't change the fact that the class of software packages that
| suffer from this phaenomenon is so large that even most of us can't avoid
| touching it.

  well, it doesn't have to be contagious just because it's rotten.  you
  don't have to agree to its terms of existence to use it, either, but you
  should _definitely_ consider not upgrading.  just slow their engine down
  and it will die and go away.  don't renew licenses that you don't like.
  it's that simple.

| Under the first license model, a tool I use might be taken away from me
| (by dropping it or misdeveloping it).  I only rely on tools that can't be
| taken away from me.  I learn rather slow and custumize highly, loosing a
| tool would be a serious problem for me.

  so, _how_ did you lose it?  don't you see that the reason it dies is that
  you have succumbed to the "upgrade or die" myth?  it's a lie, pure and
  simple.  _nothing_ dies if you don't upgrade.  it just keeps working.
  you just don't need to upgrade quality software, but if you are on a
  support plan where you pay the same whether your software is upgraded or
  not, that only means the people who support you think they can do a
  better job if you do.  this is very different form paying extra to
  upgrade.

  taking a look around me, I find that my accountant uses software he
  bought in 1985 on a computer he bought in 1992, and he has no plans to
  upgrade, because it does just what he needs it to do, and if he were to
  upgrade, it would only be a giant waste of time and money.  my girlfriend
  still runs Windows 3.11 on an aging 486 at home because it does all she
  needs it do.  my trusty old SPARCstation from 1993 still uses the very
  crisp and clear Sun M monitor, with production year 1987.  it's basically
  a good keyboard and a good X server and display for the brand new Linux
  system I have, too, but that's immaterial.  at my current client, we use
  old Pentium Pros from 1994 or whatever that used to be Novell Net servers
  as Lisp work horses, at exactly zero investment in hardware.  we could do
  that because we use Linux on them, incidentally.  the even older machine
  that runs Intel/Solaris is still in production use because it just hangs
  in there.

  now, I love new stuff, too, but not for its own sake.  I don't buy used
  stuff, but I expect whatever I buy to last for a good number of years,
  and I treat it well so it does.  software should be the same way: it's
  silly to have to upgrade the software because a particularly evil vendor
  has decided to make life hard for those who don't, only to notice that
  everything slows down just beyond the tolerance point, so you have to buy
  a new computer, too.  _that_ is just plain crazy, but people believe in
  this "upgrade or die" myth, so they learn to live with it.

| I'd like to add that I can understand your concerns when I look at the
| casual users.  In fact, they choose software on very weak measures and
| there would be a real danger that people's bad choices push the worse of
| two development branches and the better one dies.

  that's what happens.  people choose the road with least immediate effort
  at every juncture.  what's important, then, is being able to make the
  right and good choices become least-effort choices at a few junctions.
  some people refer to this as "killer apps", but I have no interest in the
  predatory world of such people.  it's enough to change the habits of a
  few people at first.

| But -and I think that's the reason why your opinions differ from mine- in
| practice there are no developers who make bad branches of free software,
| so the users can't choose the worse.

  the reason your opinion differs from mine is that we don't consider the
  same premises to begin with.  I'm not primarily concerned with bad free
  software, I'm concerned that when people get source, they will think
  that's good enough that they won't try the even better dynamic software.

Its quite easy to fault them for accepting such employment when you live
in a society with a complete social safety net, where no one ever starves,
no matter how long he's been unemployed. Unfortunately, this is not the
reality that many, if not most people live in.

Raf

--

However, there are actual people who HAVE become independantly wealthy
with free software, and there are many more people who make all their
money with free software.  Red Hat; Cygnus; some of Sun's work; IBM; and
others of greater or lesser significance.

The main difference between open source and closed source (if I may use
those terms for a while) is the way distribution happens, NOT the way the
author gets paid.  If you're a marketer specialized in software marketing,
then you have MUCH to fear from open source (but then there's evidence
that you have much to fear anyhow -- things are changing in other ways).

"You can lead a child to knowledge, but you cannot make him think."

I can certainly understand your opinion about Tunes, though.  I differ
with you as to whether it's been that much of a waste -- I learn something
from the group with every message, although sometimes the lesson is "this
person does not understand this subject."

A couple of factual errors don't remove the usefulness.

He's using different nomenclature, but that doesn't make him wrong.

I've tried Reduce, although at the time I had no patience for the
parentheses (I've learned some wisdom since (parentheses are not always
evil (and sometimes they're nice))).

But that doesn't stop it from being a "pro".

I think it was more the latter than the former.

Lots of money in this; lots of system administrators supporting this.

And contradictory to what you're contending, these applications worked
without a need for a vast number of "hacks."

These programs weren't all available right away, but were available
fairly early on, and were the main cause for a whole lot of the money
spent on IBM PC's.

Businesscritters had heard about VisiCalc, but it was not reassuring
that this ran on Apple computers built by a couple of guys that
started the business in their basement.

Lotus 1-2-3 thereby stepped straight into a *huge* niche, and *that,*
I would contend, has more to do with the commercial success of the IBM
PC than the fact that it was "pretty readily hackable."

That does not mean that I'm claiming that "hackability of MS-DOS" was
of *zero* importance; just that the two factors of:
   - IBM Seal Of Approval, and
   - Certain "Hot" applications (notably Lotus 123)
were more important to its initial success.

Furthermore, I don't think that homes are sufficiently "computer
literate" as to really make that many decisions; what is likely more
common is that people at home hear either from a friend what's "new
and hot" or see a commercial or media report, and then are routed into
a computer store where they are *told* what their decision is supposed
to be.

Common Lisp didn't start its life as an ANSI standard.
The ANSI standard just followed what has done earlier.
Common Lisp strived towards backwards compatibility,
but it also shared the same *mindset* of some earlier Lisp systems.
Common Lisp is not *really* compatible with those
dialects - try to execute Zetalisp or Maclisp code in
Common Lisp.

A language with a library has something like a "kernel".
There is no such thing in Common Lisp. Identifying "Special Forms"
as a kernel is not sufficient. There is neither a mechanism for libraries
nor is there any mentioning of a library in Common Lisp.
There are no functions, macros, special forms, classes, types,
variables, or whatever designated to be part of a library.
In a Common Lisp system adhering to some "standard" like
CLtL1, CLtL2 or ANSI CL they are all supposed to be there.
Read the ANSI CL specification and tell me where the library
is. Read also about redefining functionality in the
"Common Lisp" package.

Read careful. The "semantics of the Common Lisp macro system".
The Common Lisp macro system is a procedural macro system
which is non-hygienic.
Which are the semantic problems that the Common Lisp
macro system has?

  again, no, that is not the explanation.  if it makes you happy, I'll sure
  concede that under conditions where the only other condition is death, I
  expect people to accept most everything, but even then, there are limits.
  however, I wasn't talking about people who actually face starvation as
  their only option.  however, if you care to argue such things, it's much
  more forceful to use conditions that aren't dictated by politics, since
  the whole point is to question why people freely accept conditions that
  they a very short time later object so strongly to that they go on strike
  and do other labor-union things to hurt their employer.  obviously you
  can force people into an "accept or die" situation if you _want_ to, as
  many politicians seem to get a kick out of doing, but then the issue is
  how these people get to and stay in power.  it has always amazed me how
  you can actually manage to keep millions of people in check just by
  making them believe that you face each one of them at a time, because as
  soon as they understand that everybody else are just as unhappy, things
  start to happen.  this kind of grand-scale trickery and deceit is as
  useful in selling crap software as in running third-world countries.

| Its quite easy to fault them for accepting such employment when you live
| in a society with a complete social safety net, where no one ever
| starves, no matter how long he's been unemployed.  Unfortunately, this is
| not the reality that many, if not most people live in.

  I actually love this line of argument.  because I haven't personally
  experienced the entire world history dating back to the first humanoid, I
  shouldn't say anything that you can take to be about conditions that you
  consider the single most important in human history.  how very cute.  it
  is also customary to hold up the third world as an example of how bad
  things can be, but that is really very silly: all the reasons for their
  problems are different from our past problems, which were a lot worse,
  considering that there were no aliens who sent us big fat checks with
  lots of strings attached and with a world bank (no, make that a universe
  bank) to tell us how to run things.  you see, neither Europe nor the
  U.S. have _always_ been affluent, and some would say we still aren't all
  that affluent.  e.g., Norway was correctly described as a really backward
  country near the beginning of the previous century, complete with
  atrocious hygiene, extremely low worker morale, and rampant abuse of
  alcohol and prostitutes as soon as people were paid.  we're still mainly
  exporting raw materials for other countries to process and profit from,
  and people _still_ drink themselves unconscious on pay day.  people here,
  too, were starving at times, and did basically anything to stay alive.  a
  whole bunch moved to the U.S. and, lo and behold, managed to multiply
  much faster there than they ever did back here.

  however, the point I'm trying to get across is that people who did _not_
  live in fear of starving, moved to the big cities where there was work
  and the _prospect_ of more wealth some fuzzy time in the future, but
  actually, right then, people were starving and dying in the cities and
  _not_ in the countryside where they came from.  the _cause_ of the bad
  working conditions was that people were willing to accept just about
  anything after having been promised the sky.  my case is against people
  who promise the sky, who capitalize on people's hopes for the future, yet
  who never give them a decent _present_ because they work better when both
  their hopes and their need are high.  my case is against people who don't
  see that they have been tricked by such people and turn away from them,
  but instead embrace them the more they don't get their promised future,
  for fear of losing _all_ hope.  my case is against people who don't
  actually accept what they say they accept and then form labor unions and
  whatnot to fight for the rights they _agreed_ to have violated in order
  to maintain a _hope_ for a better future.

  this is way off topic as such, but the software equivalent is what we get
  from Redmond, WA: oppressively bad shit today but ever better promises of
  a better future, and people buy this line, for some unfathomable reason.

  in conclusion, I'd have to say that I don't think people actually want a
  better future -- they want a _promise_ of a better future.  when they get
  a better future, they won't be satisfied with it.  in fact, they turn out
  to be _dissatisfied_ with it, as in "this is _it_?".  that's what happens
  when you promise too much.  those who survived the AI Winter can tell
  stories about that promise-making gone wrong, too.  the core problem is
  that today's whole marketing culture is all about glitz and glory and
  solving _all_ the problems of the past with this teensy new gizmo or
  software or whatever.  why don't people wake up and smell the espresso?
  they've been had!  the biggest problem with this crap isn't that people
  waste so much money on idiotic things and so much time on stuff that
  won't ever give them what they want, it's that that which really _would_
  improve their future has very little chance of ever getting out there,
  except surreptitiously, like Lisp does.  and that's what I worry about.