SBCL just turned 1.0!
Lars Rune Nøstdal
lars@ibmr52:~$ sbcl
This is SBCL 1.0, an implementation of ANSI Common Lisp.
More information about SBCL is available at <http://www.sbcl.org/>.
SBCL is free software, provided as is, with absolutely no warranty.
It is mostly in the public domain; some portions are provided under
BSD-style licenses. See the CREDITS and COPYING files in the
distribution for more information.
*
This is great. :D
http://digg.com/programming/SBCL_The_Common_Lisp_implementation_has_just_turned_1_0/
--
Lars Rune Nøstdal
http://nostdal.org/
Pedro Kröger
Lars Rune Nøstdal wrote:
> SBCL has just turned 1.0!
That's very cool! Congrats to all SBCL developers.
Pedro Kroger
André Thieme
> SBCL has just turned 1.0!
Thanks to the devs! *handshaking*
André
--
Dmitry V. Gorbatovsky
> SBCL has just turned 1.0!
>
> lars@ibmr52:~$ sbcl
> This is SBCL 1.0, an implementation of ANSI Common Lisp.
> More information about SBCL is available at <http://www.sbcl.org/>.
>
> SBCL is free software, provided as is, with absolutely no warranty.
> It is mostly in the public domain; some portions are provided under
> BSD-style licenses. See the CREDITS and COPYING files in the
> distribution for more information.
> *
>
>
> This is great. :D
Let me join with my humble congratulations.
Cheers,Dmitry :D
quig...@gmail.com
> SBCL has just turned 1.0!
A big congrats goes out to the dev team. SBCL is an awesome
implementation =)
Thanks guys!
- John Quigley
Ken Tilton
quig...@gmail.com wrote:
> Lars Rune Nøstdal wrote:
>
>>SBCL has just turned 1.0!
>
>
> A big congrats goes out to the dev team. SBCL is an awesome
> implementation =)
Rubbish. No IDE and runs on like 5% of the world's computers. After a
quarter frickin century. Typical academic self-absorbed
non-accomplishment. Say what you will about commercial software, the
need to eat has no substitute when it comes to productivity.
Python wins because GvR was man enough to realize the wasted brainpower
going into replacing lambda and back down. Lisp loses because the best
and the brightest young Lisp turks are just trying to drive Franz and
Lispworks out of business when there is so much other amazing code to be
written.
Sad day, and sadder still when it does run on win32.
kzo
--
Cells: http://common-lisp.net/project/cells/
"I'll say I'm losing my grip, and it feels terrific."
-- Smiling husband to scowling wife, New Yorker cartoon
Rob Thorpe
> quig...@gmail.com wrote:
> > Lars Rune Nøstdal wrote:
> >
> >>SBCL has just turned 1.0!
> >
> >
> > A big congrats goes out to the dev team. SBCL is an awesome
> > implementation =)
>
> Rubbish. No IDE and runs on like 5% of the world's computers. After a
> quarter frickin century. Typical academic self-absorbed
> non-accomplishment. Say what you will about commercial software, the
> need to eat has no substitute when it comes to productivity.
>
> Python wins because GvR was man enough to realize the wasted brainpower
> going into replacing lambda and back down. Lisp loses because the best
> and the brightest young Lisp turks are just trying to drive Franz and
> Lispworks out of business when there is so much other amazing code to be
> written.
I love the way people rubbishing free and open-source software always
say:-
1. It's bad.
2. But it's really hurting the commercial competition.
Rob Thorpe
> SBCL has just turned 1.0!
>
> lars@ibmr52:~$ sbcl
> This is SBCL 1.0, an implementation of ANSI Common Lisp.
> More information about SBCL is available at <http://www.sbcl.org/>.
>
> SBCL is free software, provided as is, with absolutely no warranty.
> It is mostly in the public domain; some portions are provided under
> BSD-style licenses. See the CREDITS and COPYING files in the
> distribution for more information.
> *
>
>
> This is great. :D
Yes. Congratualations to those involved.
Does this mean that the SBCL folks have confidence that SBCL is stable
on those platforms marked in green on their download site?
Alex Mizrahi
(you :wrote :on '(Thu, 30 Nov 2006 12:57:35 -0500))
(
KT> and the brightest young Lisp turks are just trying to drive Franz and
KT> Lispworks out of business when there is so much other amazing code to
KT> be written.
maybe that'll cause Franz and Lispworks to improve their implementations --
for example, support hw multithreading of lisp code?
)
(With-best-regards '(Alex Mizrahi) :aka 'killer_storm)
"People who lust for the Feel of keys on their fingertips (c) Inity")
justinhj
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=1373&package_id=1354
I've been trying for a while from here and it's not working for me.
Justin
justinhj
Heh.
It worked immediately once I'd posted that.
Justin
Timofei Shatrov
confuse everyone with this message:
>
>
>quig...@gmail.com wrote:
>> Lars Rune Nøstdal wrote:
>>
>>>SBCL has just turned 1.0!
>>
>Sad day, and sadder still when it does run on win32.
It does actually, just installed it!
:(
Although it behaves quite funny when run in a certain way:
D:\SBCL\1.0>D:\SBCL\1.0\sbcl.exe
This is SBCL 1.0, an implementation of ANSI Common Lisp.
More information about SBCL is available at <http://www.sbcl.org/>.
SBCL is free software, provided as is, with absolutely no warranty.
It is mostly in the public domain; some portions are provided under
BSD-style licenses. See the CREDITS and COPYING files in the
distribution for more information.
fatal error encountered in SBCL pid 3596:
can't load .core for different runtime, sorry
LDB monitor
ldb> exit
Argh! lossage_handler() returned, total confusion..
That last message is classic.
--
|Don't believe this - you're not worthless ,gr---------.ru
|It's us against millions and we can't take them all... | ue il |
|But we can take them on! | @ma |
| (A Wilhelm Scream - The Rip) |______________|
Rob Giardina
Without a free lisp of this quality I would not be able to get started
on projects where the budget is not up to lispworks or franz. Who can
blame them for charging enough to stay alive but the fact is, lisp can
now be chosen without a research grant, vc, or corporate budget behind
you.
regards,
robg
Bill Atkins
> I love the way people rubbishing free and open-source software always
> say:-
> 1. It's bad.
> 2. But it's really hurting the commercial competition.
Why are you being sarcastic? It's perfectly valid thinking. Faced
with the choice between a free program that does 70% of what they want
mostly well (but costs nothing) and a commercial program that does
exactly what they want and does it very well (but costs money), many
people will settle for the free version.
It's harder for commercial software to be profitable when competing
against free software because vendors need to convince their customers
that they should pay for all of the costs of development to gain just
a few extra features. If free software were not free (as in beer),
it would be easier to make a living selling commercial software.
It's pretty tough to argue against this point. You could say that in
some cases free software is better than commercial software
(e.g. Emacs vs. Notepad) or that free software makes you a happier
human being, but I don't see how you can deny that no-cost software
will hurt the software industry. If I were a multimillionaire and I
started giving away shoddily-manufactured cars for free as a charity,
many people would undoubtedly put up with the lower quality to save
the purchase price, even if it only plays cassettes, breaks down once
a month, and has no air conditioning. Much as in the scenario we're
talking about, the auto industry would get wrecked, because I'm not
charging people for the costs of developing and manufacturing the
cars. But note that society has progressed backwards - people have
given up reliable cars, CD players, air conditioning, etc. And maybe
the auto manufacturers have to start cutting quality in an attempt to
compete with these free cars. In fact, not only the auto companies
but society as a whole is worse off.
verec
> quig...@gmail.com wrote:
>> Lars Rune Nøstdal wrote:
>>> SBCL has just turned 1.0!
>> A big congrats goes out to the dev team. SBCL is an awesome
>> implementation =)
>
> Rubbish. No IDE and runs on like 5% of the world's computers. After a
> quarter frickin century. Typical academic self-absorbed
> non-accomplishment. Say what you will about commercial software, the
> need to eat has no substitute when it comes to productivity.
>
> Python wins because GvR was man enough to realize the wasted brainpower
> going into replacing lambda and back down. Lisp loses because the best
> and the brightest young Lisp turks are just trying to drive Franz and
> Lispworks out of business when there is so much other amazing code to
> be written.
>
> Sad day, and sadder still when it does run on win32.
On the contrary, great day: The first time, in months, that
I can agree with KT :)
Though, on the quality front, if this SBCL release could push
Franz & LispWorks towards integration with cusp
(http://www.paragent.com/lisp/cusp/cusp.htm) in the same way
cusp does for SBCL, some of us, Emacs haters/Eclipse lovers
would certainly rejoice :-)
--
JFB
justinhj
asdf-install. I get an error which I've pasted below. I notice also
that :unix appears in the *features* which is odd.
; loading system definition from C:\sbcl1\asdf-install\asdf-install.asd
into
; #<PACKAGE "ASDF0">
; registering #<SYSTEM ASDF-INSTALL {AF039E1}> as ASDF-INSTALL
debugger invoked on a ASDF:MISSING-DEPENDENCY:
component ASDF-INSTALL-SYSTEM::SB-BSD-SOCKETS not found, required by
#<SYSTEM "asdf-install" {AF039E1}>
Alex Mizrahi
(you :wrote :on '(Thu, 30 Nov 2006 15:21:41 -0500))
(
BA> human being, but I don't see how you can deny that no-cost software
BA> will hurt the software industry.
oh, tell this to SUN Microsystems that recently made Java open-source. it
was free before, but now it's open-source -- that means they encourage
making customized implementations.
SUN did that because they care about the community.
and SUN was able to create community around Java. the community that orders
of magnitude larger that lisp's community.
and SUN makes incomes order of magnitued larger than Franz and Lispworks
do.
so no-cost software is exactly a part of business, but it's a bit more
complex than selling food or selling cars.
software can be given for no-cost to create community arround it, and then
it can be charged for addons and support.
yes, Franz and Lispworks offer free personal/trial versions, but they are
trials not useful of itself -- it's heap-limited, time-limited,
feature-limited.
with free Java implementation i can either establish a web-server, or make a
GUI or console application. can i do that with Franz or Lispworks?
hell no, it's only suitable for some experiments, at most.
so, free Common Lisp implementations are very important for Lisp community.
Robert Uhl
> If I were a multimillionaire and I started giving away
> shoddily-manufactured cars for free as a charity, many people would
> undoubtedly put up with the lower quality to save the purchase price,
> even if it only plays cassettes, breaks down once a month, and has no
> air conditioning. Much as in the scenario we're talking about, the
> auto industry would get wrecked, because I'm not charging people for
> the costs of developing and manufacturing the cars. But note that
> society has progressed backwards - people have given up reliable cars,
> CD players, air conditioning, etc.
But society hasn't regressed--folks have free cars, leaving them more
funds to invest in more useful things.
Low-priced software puts high-priced software out of business; this is
hardly economic news.
--
Robert Uhl <http://public.xdi.org/=ruhl>
Don't underestimate the Vikings. They'd have gotten longships out to
the moon if they thought there was something worth killing, raping, or
stealing when they got there. --Mike Sphar
Tim Bradshaw
<udod...@users.sourceforge.net> said:
> oh, tell this to SUN Microsystems that recently made Java open-source.
> it was free before, but now it's open-source -- that means they
> encourage making customized implementations.
> SUN did that because they care about the community.
This explains everything. Some bloody bunch of hippies have taken them
over (I mean, look at that Schwartz guy, hair down to his waist) & are
busy caring about `the community' when they should be caring about `the
shareholders'. Kick em out and replace them with Bill Gates, I say.
You don't see him doing this whole open-source thing, do you now?
Bloody hippies.
--tim
Timofei Shatrov
everyone with this message:
>I've tried the win32 version today. I got stuck trying to use asdf and
(require :asdf-install) seems to load it without errors. However making
asdf-install work under Windows requires some hacking. It downloads packages
just fine, but then fails to unpack them, or something. I think it's easier to
grab asdf-extensions.lisp from Lispbox and use it to install stuff.
Frank Buss
> Kick em out and replace them with Bill Gates, I say.
> You don't see him doing this whole open-source thing, do you now?
but at least Microsoft has Shared Source and some development tools are
free:
http://www.microsoft.com/resources/sharedsource/default.mspx
http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/express/default.aspx
--
Frank Buss, f...@frank-buss.de
http://www.frank-buss.de, http://www.it4-systems.de
Andrew Reilly
> Congratulations and sincere thanks to the SBCL development team.
> Without a free lisp of this quality I would not be able to get started
> on projects where the budget is not up to lispworks or franz. Who can
> blame them for charging enough to stay alive but the fact is, lisp can
> now be chosen without a research grant, vc, or corporate budget behind
> you.
Sorry, I don't want to sound rude, or denigrate SBCL: I'm new to this lisp
game. I got interested when I found that installing maxima had pulled in
CLISP, and I started reading. (Well, I did some franz lisp under BSD as
an undergrad in an AI course, lo those many years ago, and I've forgotten
essentially all of that.)
What's so special about SBCL1.0, compared to all of the zillion other lisp
implementations that seem to be around? Are they all really so
un-useful? Isn't SBCL essentially similar to CMU-CL? The comment quoted
makes it sound as though this is an earth-shattering event.
Guess I'll just have to install it, and see what the fuss is about first
hand...
Cheers,
--
Andrew
Javier
Bill Atkins ha escrito:
> "Rob Thorpe" <rth...@realworldtech.com> writes:
>
> > I love the way people rubbishing free and open-source software always
> > say:-
> > 1. It's bad.
> > 2. But it's really hurting the commercial competition.
>
> Why are you being sarcastic? It's perfectly valid thinking. Faced
> with the choice between a free program that does 70% of what they want
> mostly well (but costs nothing) and a commercial program that does
> exactly what they want and does it very well (but costs money), many
> people will settle for the free version.
>
> It's harder for commercial software to be profitable when competing
> against free software because vendors need to convince their customers
> that they should pay for all of the costs of development to gain just
> a few extra features. If free software were not free (as in beer),
> it would be easier to make a living selling commercial software.
That's nice! Isn't it crude capitalism? :-)
Or, do you want to regulate people when they produce free software if
they want to? This is closer to socialism, communism and corporatism.
I clearly prefer freedom.
> It's pretty tough to argue against this point. You could say that in
> some cases free software is better than commercial software
> (e.g. Emacs vs. Notepad) or that free software makes you a happier
> human being, but I don't see how you can deny that no-cost software
> will hurt the software industry. If I were a multimillionaire and I
> started giving away shoddily-manufactured cars for free as a charity,
> many people would undoubtedly put up with the lower quality to save
> the purchase price, even if it only plays cassettes, breaks down once
> a month, and has no air conditioning.
Stop there! Cars need to be assembled, and the material of every unit
cost money.
Software has no material, and does not need to be assembled if you
want, so your analogy is completely incorrect.
And look at Franz... are they making profit because their software is
closed, or because they are doing support and consulting? ...think
about it.
David Steuber
> Sad day, and sadder still when it does run on win32.
Are you made out of wet blankets and bile?
--
This post uses 100% post consumer electrons and 100% virgin photons.
At 2.6 miles per minute, you don't really have time to get bored.
--- Pete Roehling on rec.motorcycles
I bump into a lot of veteran riders in my travels.
--- David Hough: Proficient Motorcycling
Paul Wallich
> Bill Atkins <atk...@rpi.edu> writes:
>
>> If I were a multimillionaire and I started giving away
>> shoddily-manufactured cars for free as a charity, many people would
>> undoubtedly put up with the lower quality to save the purchase price,
>> even if it only plays cassettes, breaks down once a month, and has no
>> air conditioning. Much as in the scenario we're talking about, the
>> auto industry would get wrecked, because I'm not charging people for
>> the costs of developing and manufacturing the cars. But note that
>> society has progressed backwards - people have given up reliable cars,
>> CD players, air conditioning, etc.
>
> But society hasn't regressed--folks have free cars, leaving them more
> funds to invest in more useful things.
>
> Low-priced software puts high-priced software out of business; this is
> hardly economic news.
Low-priced software puts high-priced low-value software out of business.
For high-priced software that offers good value for the money,
low-priced or free software can actually increase sales, just as free
distribution of other copyrighted content can ultimately increase sales.
paul
Bill Atkins
> That's nice! Isn't it crude capitalism? :-)
> Or, do you want to regulate people when they produce free software if
> they want to? This is closer to socialism, communism and corporatism.
> I clearly prefer freedom.
Whoa, where did I say government should regulate this? In fact, where
did I say that anything at all should be done about the situation?
> Stop there! Cars need to be assembled, and the material of every unit
> cost money.
> Software has no material, and does not need to be assembled if you
> want, so your analogy is completely incorrect.
All analogies are incorrect, by definition. But it doesn't matter if
the cost of software (time and talent) is fixed or variable. There
are still costs, even if those costs are fixed and even if they don't
involve purchasing material.
> And look at Franz... are they making profit because their software is
> closed, or because they are doing support and consulting? ...think
> about it.
Both? People that don't want support and consulting still pay Franz
(lots of) money to use their software.
Bill Atkins
> Bill Atkins <atk...@rpi.edu> writes:
>
>> If I were a multimillionaire and I started giving away
>> shoddily-manufactured cars for free as a charity, many people would
>> undoubtedly put up with the lower quality to save the purchase price,
>> even if it only plays cassettes, breaks down once a month, and has no
>> air conditioning. Much as in the scenario we're talking about, the
>> auto industry would get wrecked, because I'm not charging people for
>> the costs of developing and manufacturing the cars. But note that
>> society has progressed backwards - people have given up reliable cars,
>> CD players, air conditioning, etc.
>
> But society hasn't regressed--folks have free cars, leaving them more
> funds to invest in more useful things.
Sure it has. Society is accepting inferior products and people who
formerly would have bought cars can't help but opt for the free one.
Progress made on things like catalytic converters, fuel efficiency,
safety, etc. is lost, and these features are no longer enjoyed by the
bulk of car drivers because it would be too costly to add them to the
barebones free cars that I, the maverick billionaire philanthropist,
am giving away and it's too easy for people to ignore these
deficiencies when they have to pay nothing at all to own the car.
> Low-priced software puts high-priced software out of business; this is
> hardly economic news.
No kidding. I'm not saying its news; I'm just explaining why I
disagree with Mr. Thorpe's claim that free software can't both be bad
*and* capable of hurting the software industry.
I'd also point out software that costs absolutely nothing is different
than software that is simply less expensive than other software.
Ken Tilton
David Steuber wrote:
> Ken Tilton <kent...@gmail.com> writes:
>
>
>>Sad day, and sadder still when it does run on win32.
>
>
> Are you made out of wet blankets and bile?
>
Apparently not:
http://www.tilton-technology.com/rogercormannyc3.html
Are you made of adhominium?
I made a remark about how the community choses to allocate scarce
resources. It is pretty abstract cuz of course we are all free to do as
we please, and of course there is no community. In fact, I was just
counterbalancing a rather bizarre dancing-in-the-streets phenomenon over
I-am-not-sure-what accomplishment with an admittedly dubious point:
exactly what drives the development of CMUCL/SBCL when we have not-all
that-expensive pro licenses for LW and ACL, as well as utterly free
CLisp with aewsome FFI, MOP, and more?
Is it the "I am looking for a free XXX" disease RMS unleashed on the
software industry?
Oh, sorry, I am back on topic, you wanted to roll around kicking and
a-gouging in the mud and the blood and the beer. Nah, you gotta come to
LispNYC meetings and get to me before the bouncers do.
:)
David Steuber
> Guess I'll just have to install it, and see what the fuss is about first
> hand...
The secret is in the soft chocolaty center.
Considering the time that's gone into SBCL, it's kinda nice to see a
1.0 release. Were all the 1.0 milestones that were posted as a sort
of wish list a while back met?
Raffael Cavallaro
> you wanted to roll around kicking and a-gouging in the mud and the
> blood and the beer.
Somehow "A Boy Named Kenzo" doesn't have quite the same ring. ;^)
jayessay
> (message (Hello 'Bill)
> (you :wrote :on '(Thu, 30 Nov 2006 15:21:41 -0500))
> (
>
> BA> human being, but I don't see how you can deny that no-cost software
> BA> will hurt the software industry.
>
> oh, tell this to SUN Microsystems that recently made Java open-source. it
> was free before, but now it's open-source
Come on - this is totally irrelevant and you should know it is.
/Jon
--
'j' - a n t h o n y at romeo/charley/november com
jayessay
> Bill Atkins <atk...@rpi.edu> writes:
>
> > If I were a multimillionaire and I started giving away
> > shoddily-manufactured cars for free as a charity, many people would
> > undoubtedly put up with the lower quality to save the purchase price,
> > even if it only plays cassettes, breaks down once a month, and has no
> > air conditioning. Much as in the scenario we're talking about, the
> > auto industry would get wrecked, because I'm not charging people for
> > the costs of developing and manufacturing the cars. But note that
> > society has progressed backwards - people have given up reliable cars,
> > CD players, air conditioning, etc.
>
> But society hasn't regressed--folks have free cars, leaving them more
> funds to invest in more useful things.
LOL!
Bill Atkins
> No kidding. I'm not saying its news; I'm just explaining why I
I meant "it's"
jayessay
> Robert Uhl <eadm...@NOSPAMgmail.com> writes:
> > Low-priced software puts high-priced software out of business; this is
> > hardly economic news.
>
> No kidding. I'm not saying its news; I'm just explaining why I
> disagree with Mr. Thorpe's claim that free software can't both be bad
> *and* capable of hurting the software industry.
Exactly. What I have a hard time understanding is why otherwise
seemingly intelligent people have a hard time understanding this.
Bill Atkins
> maybe that'll cause Franz and Lispworks to improve their implementations --
> for example, support hw multithreading of lisp code?
Which free Lisps do this?
Pascal Bourguignon
None. That's the point.
--
__Pascal Bourguignon__ http://www.informatimago.com/
I need a new toy.
Tail of black dog keeps good time.
Pounce! Good dog! Good dog!
Victor Kryukov
Ken Tilton wrote:
> I made a remark about how the community choses to allocate scarce
> resources. It is pretty abstract cuz of course we are all free to do as
> we please, and of course there is no community. In fact, I was just
> counterbalancing a rather bizarre dancing-in-the-streets phenomenon over
> I-am-not-sure-what accomplishment with an admittedly dubious point:
> exactly what drives the development of CMUCL/SBCL when we have not-all
> that-expensive pro licenses for LW and ACL, as well as utterly free
> CLisp with aewsome FFI, MOP, and more?
Utterly-free clisp doesn't support threads - which seriously hampers
web-development in my view. (Of course you may lunch new process for
every user, as PG apparently did, but I'm not sure how scalable /
efficient is that).
Pro licenses for LW / ACL are not-all-that-expensive indeed, at least
for folks who have government / university / company / sponsor money,
or want to start any serious software business.
I'm considering starting a company myself, and sales reps from both LW
and Franz were really friendly. The only thing that puzzles me is that
Franz requires *roaylties* for running binaries compiled with Allegro
CL (LW doesn't have that). When I explained the setting where I'm
going to use ACL - compiling binary on my development machine and
putting it on my web-server(s), he replied that Franz would want
*percentage* of my revenues as a roalties, or at least that was the way
I understood him. Which other (commercial) compiler manufacturer
requires such thing from his users?
On the other hand, Franz is really flexible supporting start-ups - I
asked for deferred payments, and they was ready to agree on almost any
reasonable scheme; LW wasn't that loyal. But pro license for LW is 4
times cheaper than ACL.
Overall, if I could combine Franz flexible approach to startups with
lower-cost and roalty-free LW pro license, I would negotiate the deal.
But right now, I have to use SBCL on linux-x86.
Regards,
Victor.
Bill Atkins
> Utterly-free clisp doesn't support threads - which seriously hampers
> web-development in my view. (Of course you may lunch new process for
> every user, as PG apparently did, but I'm not sure how scalable /
> efficient is that).
You could prefork some processes ahead of time to avoid the overhead
of making new processes. But I agree that threads would be much
nicer.
> I'm considering starting a company myself, and sales reps from both LW
> and Franz were really friendly. The only thing that puzzles me is that
> Franz requires *roaylties* for running binaries compiled with Allegro
> CL (LW doesn't have that). When I explained the setting where I'm
> going to use ACL - compiling binary on my development machine and
> putting it on my web-server(s), he replied that Franz would want
> *percentage* of my revenues as a roalties, or at least that was the way
> I understood him. Which other (commercial) compiler manufacturer
> requires such thing from his users?
I understood it the same way. Franz wouldn't explain why I should
give up a percentage of my revenue, so I looked into and bought
LispWorks, which I actually like better than Allegro.
> On the other hand, Franz is really flexible supporting start-ups - I
> asked for deferred payments, and they was ready to agree on almost any
> reasonable scheme; LW wasn't that loyal. But pro license for LW is 4
> times cheaper than ACL.
Since this is for a business, you might consider financing a LispWorks
license with a loan or even a credit card - that's how I paid for
mine. Even if Franz defers payments, you're going to have to pay
royalties for the rest of your business's life; paying down the cost
of a LispWorks license doesn't even come close to that.
Damien Kick
> Ken Tilton <kent...@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> Sad day, and sadder still when it does run on win32.
>
> Are you made out of wet blankets and bile?
He's probably just still sore about what (expt -3 2) returns.
Victor Kryukov
Bill Atkins <atk...@rpi.edu> writes:
> "Victor Kryukov" <victor....@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> On the other hand, Franz is really flexible supporting start-ups - I
>> asked for deferred payments, and they was ready to agree on almost any
>> reasonable scheme; LW wasn't that loyal. But pro license for LW is 4
>> times cheaper than ACL.
>
> Since this is for a business, you might consider financing a LispWorks
> license with a loan or even a credit card - that's how I paid for
> mine. Even if Franz defers payments, you're going to have to pay
> royalties for the rest of your business's life; paying down the cost
> of a LispWorks license doesn't even come close to that.
That's true. If a person is serious enough to start a business (and
lucky enough to live in developed world :), $1.5K is not a problem -
credit card, loan, friends & family, sell your fancy bike etc.
The main reason I'm not selling my fancy bike is that I don't see any
_serious_ advantage of LW over SBCL _on Linux platform_. Franz has
something: they have AllegroCashe, and they wrote AllegroServe which
means that if I would ever find a critical bug in it, they would
probably fix it per my request.
LW has nice development environment, I agree, but I doubt it has
significant marginal value over Emacs + SLIME. It also support threads
on Intel Mac, which SBCL currently doesn't, and it's nice as I own
Macbook and like the environment, but LW cannot cross-compile, so I
would need additional license to compile binaries for my servers.
Because of all that, I just ended up buying Linux development machine.
However, I'm open to changing my view. Do you have any argumentation
for choosing LW over SBCL in the commercial environment*?
Regards,
Victor.
[*] A classmate of mine currently works for ITA Software. He said they
mainly use SBCL for their development (at least in his department),
though they have some ACL licenses as well. The reasons for choosing
SBCL over ACL were not financial, he said.
Ken Tilton
David Steuber wrote:
> Considering the time that's gone into SBCL,...
Oh, so you agree.
<sigh>
kt
Ken Tilton
Pascal Bourguignon wrote:
> Bill Atkins <atk...@rpi.edu> writes:
>
>
>>"Alex Mizrahi" <udod...@users.sourceforge.net> writes:
>>
>>
>>>maybe that'll cause Franz and Lispworks to improve their implementations --
>>>for example, support hw multithreading of lisp code?
>>
>>Which free Lisps do this?
>
>
> None. That's the point.
>
And about as moronic as one could hope for. Sure, let's have RMS start a
free automobile factory so detroit will be forced to achieve levitation
in order to make a frickin dime. buh-rillyant.
Ken Tilton
Victor Kryukov wrote:
> Hello, Ken
>
> Ken Tilton wrote:
>
>
>>I made a remark about how the community choses to allocate scarce
>>resources. It is pretty abstract cuz of course we are all free to do as
>>we please, and of course there is no community. In fact, I was just
>>counterbalancing a rather bizarre dancing-in-the-streets phenomenon over
>>I-am-not-sure-what accomplishment with an admittedly dubious point:
>>exactly what drives the development of CMUCL/SBCL when we have not-all
>>that-expensive pro licenses for LW and ACL, as well as utterly free
>>CLisp with aewsome FFI, MOP, and more?
>
>
> Utterly-free clisp doesn't support threads - which seriously hampers
> web-development in my view.
I smell the same bogus argument that misled someone into abandoning Lisp
to achieve the continuations "necessary" for web apps.
> (Of course you may lunch new process for
> every user, as PG apparently did, but I'm not sure how scalable /
> efficient is that).
>
> Pro licenses for LW / ACL are not-all-that-expensive indeed, at least
> for folks who have government / university / company / sponsor money,
> or want to start any serious software business.
>
> I'm considering starting a company myself, and sales reps from both LW
> and Franz were really friendly. The only thing that puzzles me is that
> Franz requires *roaylties* for running binaries compiled with Allegro
> CL (LW doesn't have that).
Well, that is how they make money, not sure why that is puzzling.
Undesirable, sure, but if you use all their tools and tech support it at
least had to come close to justifying the royalty, and likely more than
pays for it.
> When I explained the setting where I'm
> going to use ACL - compiling binary on my development machine and
> putting it on my web-server(s), he replied that Franz would want
> *percentage* of my revenues as a roalties, or at least that was the way
> I understood him. Which other (commercial) compiler manufacturer
> requires such thing from his users?
SleepycatDB? (royalty I mean, not compiler)
>
> On the other hand, Franz is really flexible supporting start-ups - I
> asked for deferred payments, and they was ready to agree on almost any
> reasonable scheme; LW wasn't that loyal.
Sorry, are you saying LW demanded their zero percent up front? :)
My problem with Franz was that if I /succeeded/ the chunk they wanted
was enough for me to hire a dozen yobbos to do KTCL from frickin
scratch. No wonder they seem friendly. Ask them a couple of intelligent
questions and see what they do.
> But pro license for LW is 4
> times cheaper than ACL.
>
> Overall, if I could combine Franz flexible approach to startups...
ok, you definitely did not ask the intelligent questions. :) of course,
if you plan on /failing/... :)
> with
> lower-cost and roalty-free LW pro license, I would negotiate the deal.
> But right now, I have to use SBCL on linux-x86.
You cannot afford LW Pro? And you are doing a Lisp start-up? You know,
that is fine, but i think you exist in a (lunatic?) fringe window of
commercial opportunity any vendor can safely lose. This is not a slam on
you, I just mean no one would ever be able to build a business on
customers like you, so they might as well lose you and bet the ranch on
a different pricing model.
I mean, you want LW to both give away runtimes and not charge for their
software, because you have this cash problem. yeah! Let /them/ have the
cash problem! that way they go out of busi... hang on.
You free-free-free people simply never imagine the vendor's postion in a
world where Lisp is still a niche market. This language is a commercial,
competitive, productivity grand slam and two vendors are providing
extraordinary implementations and add-ons and you are bleating about the
cost?!
You know what? No, you actually do not appreciate Lisp. No one who sees
the competitive advantage of Lisp and knows how to add makes such judgments.
kt
Ken Tilton
No, I am just goading them into finishing the win32 version. Then I stop
sharing Cells and Cello and Celtk and build a proprietary cash machine
atop their sweat. Giving them nothing. PWUAUAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAA!!!!!
kzo
Pascal Costanza
>
>
> David Steuber wrote:
>> Ken Tilton <kent...@gmail.com> writes:
>>
>>
>>> Sad day, and sadder still when it does run on win32.
>>
>>
>> Are you made out of wet blankets and bile?
>>
>
> Apparently not:
>
> http://www.tilton-technology.com/rogercormannyc3.html
>
> Are you made of adhominium?
>
> I made a remark about how the community choses to allocate scarce
> resources. It is pretty abstract cuz of course we are all free to do as
> we please, and of course there is no community. In fact, I was just
> counterbalancing a rather bizarre dancing-in-the-streets phenomenon over
> I-am-not-sure-what accomplishment with an admittedly dubious point:
> exactly what drives the development of CMUCL/SBCL when we have not-all
> that-expensive pro licenses for LW and ACL, as well as utterly free
> CLisp with aewsome FFI, MOP, and more?
Your remark was not really about Common Lisp per se, and the topic is
known to cause heated discussions / flames, with no realistic chance of
achieving an agreement in the end.
Could your remark be classified as trolling?
Just asking...
Pascal
--
My website: http://p-cos.net
Common Lisp Document Repository: http://cdr.eurolisp.org
Closer to MOP & ContextL: http://common-lisp.net/project/closer/
Pillsy
> "Alex Mizrahi" <udod...@users.sourceforge.net> writes:
I was under the impression that SBCL had "experimental"[1] support for
this, but I could be wrong.
Cheers,
Pillsy
[1] Which may or may not count for the purposes of this discussion.
Timofei Shatrov
confuse everyone with this message:
>Robert Uhl <eadm...@NOSPAMgmail.com> writes:
>
>> Bill Atkins <atk...@rpi.edu> writes:
>>
>>> If I were a multimillionaire and I started giving away
>>> shoddily-manufactured cars for free as a charity, many people would
>>> undoubtedly put up with the lower quality to save the purchase price,
>>> even if it only plays cassettes, breaks down once a month, and has no
>>> air conditioning. Much as in the scenario we're talking about, the
>>> auto industry would get wrecked, because I'm not charging people for
>>> the costs of developing and manufacturing the cars. But note that
>>> society has progressed backwards - people have given up reliable cars,
>>> CD players, air conditioning, etc.
>>
>> But society hasn't regressed--folks have free cars, leaving them more
>> funds to invest in more useful things.
>
>Sure it has. Society is accepting inferior products and people who
>formerly would have bought cars can't help but opt for the free one.
>Progress made on things like catalytic converters, fuel efficiency,
>safety, etc. is lost, and these features are no longer enjoyed by the
>bulk of car drivers because it would be too costly to add them to the
>barebones free cars that I, the maverick billionaire philanthropist,
>am giving away and it's too easy for people to ignore these
>deficiencies when they have to pay nothing at all to own the car.
This analogy is rather flawed. In OSS case, some talented engineer can add some
device to the car, and then, somehow, give this upgraded car for free to anyone
who wants it. Oh wait, that doesn't make sense. Mimesis is broken. Bad analogy,
bad.
You just can't compare software and "hardware". Software is free to reproduce
and software companies make money out of thin air. Hardware costs money to
reproduce, and you pay the cost of reproducing it, not the cost of designing it
or something like that.
A better analogy would be: some billionaire designs a crappy car and gives the
design to anyone for free. You can see how your whole arguments falls apart. Car
companies actually benefit in this case, because they can take the basic design
and add mods until the car is decent enough.
--
|Don't believe this - you're not worthless ,gr---------.ru
|It's us against millions and we can't take them all... | ue il |
|But we can take them on! | @ma |
| (A Wilhelm Scream - The Rip) |______________|
Alex Mizrahi
(you :wrote :on '(Thu, 30 Nov 2006 22:54:27 -0500))
(
??>> maybe that'll cause Franz and Lispworks to improve their
??>> implementations -- for example, support hw multithreading of lisp
??>> code?
BA> Which free Lisps do this?
SBCL, OpenMCL, ABCL.
well, OpenMCL currently normally runs only on PPC, SBCL's support is
experimental and not all platforms are supported, ABCL runs ontop of JVM.
but here commercial vendos can, at least, give something that is not
present in free implementations -- consistent and stable support.
well, there is Scieneer Common Lisp that is designed to be runned on
multiprocessor systems, a rewrite of CMUCL -- but it costs hell a lot,
something like 3000 for one installation.
hw multithreading is not a rocket science -- free .net implementation Mono
(by the way, i think Microsoft encourages it) has this, as well as most free
JVMs, so absense of this in Common Lisp implementation means either lazyness
or technical incompetence of the implementors.
)
(With-best-regards '(Alex Mizrahi) :aka 'killer_storm)
"People who lust for the Feel of keys on their fingertips (c) Inity")
Alex Mizrahi
(you :wrote :on '(Thu, 30 Nov 2006 23:18:31 +0000))
(
TB> This explains everything. Some bloody bunch of hippies have taken them
TB> over (I mean, look at that Schwartz guy, hair down to his waist) & are
TB> busy caring about `the community' when they should be caring about `the
TB> shareholders'. Kick em out and replace them with Bill Gates, I say.
TB> You don't see him doing this whole open-source thing, do you now?
hell no, Microsoft gives their compiler for free, charging only for
additional libraries and IDE.
you can create applications using Microsoft tools for free.
Microsoft cares that there are a lot of applications for Windows.
do lisp vendos care that much about lisp?
certainly, if lisp community grows, sales of lisp vendors can be increased,
so more people would be involved, and more of them will buy their
implementations for additional features. also, they can lower prices, so
more people would buy that.
it's a complex inter-induction process, requiring much more analysis than
simple selling stuff.
Bill Atkins
> hell no, Microsoft gives their compiler for free, charging only for
> additional libraries and IDE.
> you can create applications using Microsoft tools for free.
> Microsoft cares that there are a lot of applications for Windows.
Microsoft makes almost all of its revenue from Windows and Office.
Giving away development tools simply helps boost revenue for Windows.
This is why they care. How does this apply to the Lisp vendors? (the
tables have turned, now I'm criticizing an analogy...)
> certainly, if lisp community grows, sales of lisp vendors can be increased,
> so more people would be involved, and more of them will buy their
> implementations for additional features. also, they can lower prices, so
> more people would buy that.
> it's a complex inter-induction process, requiring much more analysis than
> simple selling stuff.
It is pretty complex (though I don't know for sure if it involves
"inter-induction"), but somehow you seem to grasp the intricacies of
it better than the vendors themselves, who have been getting along
quite well for decades.
Bill Atkins
> This analogy is rather flawed. In OSS case, some talented engineer
> can add some device to the car, and then, somehow, give this
> upgraded car for free to anyone who wants it. Oh wait, that doesn't
> make sense. Mimesis is broken. Bad analogy, bad.
All analogies are bad; it was my mistake to include one in my original
post, since people are now pointing out why the analogy doesn't work
instead of refuting my main argument.
> You just can't compare software and "hardware". Software is free to
> reproduce and software companies make money out of thin
> air. Hardware costs money to reproduce, and you pay the cost of
> reproducing it, not the cost of designing it or something like that.
I'm well aware of the difference between hardware and software and the
difference between variable and fixed costs. Nevertheless, I still
hold to my original point: if people choose not to recoup the costs of
developing and/or producing any product and give it away for free,
standards fall and well-designed products are harder to sell, since
they have to justify a price that includes the cost of development
while their free competitors do not. If people resort to the free
alternative, the better solutions are more likely to lose ground to
inferior but free solutions.
So I think we can agree that the availability of a free, "good enough"
solution will be attractive to many people, and will drive business
away from companies that are producing high-caliber software, but have
to recoup the costs of development. I don't think it's a huge logical
leap to point out this trend leads to lower software quality overall
and takes computing backwards instead of forwards. I think Ken is on
to something too that all of this time spent dabbling in open-source
stuff causes people to miss out on Lisp opportunities that could break
Lisp into the big time.
> A better analogy would be: some billionaire designs a crappy car and
> gives the design to anyone for free. You can see how your whole
> arguments falls apart. Car companies actually benefit in this case,
> because they can take the basic design and add mods until the car is
> decent enough.
My argument doesn't fall apart (in any case, this is now your argument
- not mine). Car companies ignore the design because it's crappy, and
because it's not being produced price-free as competition. Sorry.
> --
> |Don't believe this - you're not worthless ,gr---------.ru
> |It's us against millions and we can't take them all... | ue il |
> |But we can take them on! | @ma |
> | (A Wilhelm Scream - The Rip) |______________|
A Wilhelm Scream? Come on...
Bill Atkins
All right, I feel very responsible for taking this thread way off
topic and for ranting in such an inflammatory way. So I am going to
duck out of this argument. I don't think anyone's point of view is
going to be affected by this back-and-forth posting (mine certainly
hasn't). I feel like my replies are getting increasingly snippy and
rude and I am feeling uncomfortably like a troll. Mea culpa,
comp.lang.lisp. Please, carry on. Nothing to see here.
Bill
Alex Mizrahi
(you :wrote :on '(Fri, 01 Dec 2006 04:51:10 -0500))
(
BA> Microsoft makes almost all of its revenue from Windows and Office.
BA> Giving away development tools simply helps boost revenue for Windows.
BA> This is why they care. How does this apply to the Lisp vendors? (the
BA> tables have turned, now I'm criticizing an analogy...)
they could give-away basic set of tools that is not suitable for comfortable
development, but is suitable for deployment.
and sell IDE and libs that serious developers would buy (if they've already
made a product that was shipped, they will buy additional comfort from same
vendor for sure).
SBCL is exactly like that -- it's suitable for deployment, but development
might be not-so-comfortable. but if people are not sure about how they
product goes, or just experimenting and learning, they will get SBCL rather
then Lispworks. but if they create a product, will they switch from SBCL to
Lispworks? unlikely.
??>> certainly, if lisp community grows, sales of lisp vendors can be
??>> increased, so more people would be involved, and more of them will buy
??>> their implementations for additional features. also, they can lower
??>> prices, so more people would buy that. it's a complex inter-induction
??>> process, requiring much more analysis than simple selling stuff.
BA> It is pretty complex (though I don't know for sure if it involves
BA> "inter-induction"), but somehow you seem to grasp the intricacies of
BA> it better than the vendors themselves, who have been getting along
BA> quite well for decades.
i don't think they get quite well -- Microsoft and SUN Microsystems managed
to get their .net and Java languages/environments to get popular in shortest
periods of time, and now they are very popular, and used widely for web
development (i think Microsoft understands that desktop OS market can
collapse with move to the web-applications, thus they have established a web
platform).
at same time, Lisp vendors, having Lisp that should be superior to .net and
Java (*), did not grow community comarable to above ones. certainly, they
have some sales -- but it's not a greate achievement, since Lisp has
40-years history, and they can sell some products without much inovations
just to support old needs.
(*) one can say that C#/Java are different since they have static typing,
but i think it's not that hard to make same thing for lisp -- with type
inference like in ML or Haskell -- so Lisp should be better in all aspects.
Joel Wilsson
> while their free competitors do not. If people resort to the free
> alternative, the better solutions are more likely to lose ground to
> inferior but free solutions.
Once people focus on that free solution, however, it usually doesn't
take long until it is no longer inferior.
> So I think we can agree that the availability of a free, "good enough"
> solution will be attractive to many people, and will drive business
> away from companies that are producing high-caliber software, but have
> to recoup the costs of development.
As others have already pointed out, they can recoup the costs of
development by other means, like selling support and services.
Many companies do this with free software.
> I don't think it's a huge logical
> leap to point out this trend leads to lower software quality overall
> and takes computing backwards instead of forwards.
I don't think that's necessarily true. There is enough high quality
free software to suggest that it's not that simple.
> I think Ken is on
> to something too that all of this time spent dabbling in open-source
> stuff causes people to miss out on Lisp opportunities that could break
> Lisp into the big time.
It's short-sighted to say that free, "good enough" quality
implementations of Common Lisp are bad for the community. Yes, they
might be bad for commercial Common Lisp vendors, if they can't keep
up the innovation and provide enough value over the free
implementation of Common Lisp. If the commercial vendors are that
important to the community, then it may be bad. From what I've
seen, they're not.
However, pointing the finger at the SBCL development team is wrong.
Franz and others are not just competing with other vendors of CL,
they are competing with all language providers, whether it's CL or
something else. You can't deny that it's a very good argument for
any language to be able to say that "yes, we have this really good
implementation that you can get for free, of course you don't have
to pay royalties".
Python, Perl, Ruby, Java, C# - you can use any of them without
having to pay anything at all. If someone is looking for a language
to learn (and/or use for a commercial project), he'd be wise to
pick any language that has no cost for him, and there are plenty
to choose from. This is the competition Franz and LW are up against;
it's not just SBCL.
That's the way the market is today, and you might not like it.
Franz and LW probably hate it. That doesn't matter, because it's
just the way it is. Companies will adapt to the market or die, and
if they do die, we might lose many fine products and ideas.
Sad, but that's capitalism.
Espen Vestre
> LW has nice development environment, I agree, but I doubt it has
> significant marginal value over Emacs + SLIME. It also support threads
> on Intel Mac, which SBCL currently doesn't, and it's nice as I own
> Macbook and like the environment, but LW cannot cross-compile, so I
> would need additional license to compile binaries for my servers.
> Because of all that, I just ended up buying Linux development machine.
You should have considered Parallels. I've just started using that on
my MacBook Pro and my virtual debian server on my laptop now runs our
simple benchmark program (a binary generated with LispWorks for linux)
faster than several of our Opteron servers :-) Installing Debian sarge
was a piece of cake, except for X (so far), but I doubt that I really
need that - I just ssh into the virtual machine from the "real"
MacBook and run X applications via X tunneling. Works flawlessly. So
now I can do triple-OS lisp development on one machine :-)
Regarding LispWorks vs. SBCL: I guess YMMV. We're very satisfied with
the support we get and the pace of development at LispWorks - we just
put a lisp server based on their 64 bit linux version into production
and are very pleased with the performance. I haven't seriously tried
SBCL for a while, so I can't give a good assessment of the differences,
but I imagine that the Oracle support of LispWorks would be a selling
point? (Also, I do cross platform GUI stuff, so of course CAPI is a
good selling point)
--
(espen)
Alex Mizrahi
(you :wrote :on '(30 Nov 2006 23:47:38 GMT))
(
AR> What's so special about SBCL1.0, compared to all of the zillion other
AR> lisp implementations that seem to be around?
hm, i think it's one of most actively developed.
as for special features, they are implementing harware multithreading (that
means actually running lisp code on multiple cores/processors at once).
AR> Isn't SBCL essentially similar to
AR> CMU-CL?
cmucl doesn't support threading well, so if you have a webserver, it won't
be very stable/performant.
if you want CMUCL + threads you need to pay some 3000$. so free SBCL is
cool, ye?
John Thingstad
<udod...@users.sourceforge.net> wrote:
>
> ??>> certainly, if lisp community grows, sales of lisp vendors can be
> ??>> increased, so more people would be involved, and more of them will
> buy
> ??>> their implementations for additional features. also, they can lower
> ??>> prices, so more people would buy that. it's a complex
> inter-induction
> ??>> process, requiring much more analysis than simple selling stuff.
>
> BA> It is pretty complex (though I don't know for sure if it involves
> BA> "inter-induction"), but somehow you seem to grasp the intricacies of
> BA> it better than the vendors themselves, who have been getting along
> BA> quite well for decades.
>
I fail to see the comparison. .NET is a ibrary which is language
independent
automatizing some of the managament necessary under COM. Java's cross
compatible libraries
makes it popular. How does Lisp compete? Lisp can also use .NET and Java
libraries.
--
Using Opera's revolutionary e-mail client: http://www.opera.com/mail/
John Thingstad
>
> Since this is for a business, you might consider financing a LispWorks
> license with a loan or even a credit card - that's how I paid for
> mine. Even if Franz defers payments, you're going to have to pay
> royalties for the rest of your business's life; paying down the cost
> of a LispWorks license doesn't even come close to that.
One of the rules of company developement is to keep the costs of initial
developement
to a minimum. Only people that don't need money get easy loans. So this is
a major show
stopper. If you spend 20 000$ on software before developing anything
(which is easy)
you are going for a big fall if you fail.
John Thingstad
> Ken Tilton wrote:
>> David Steuber wrote:
>>> Ken Tilton <kent...@gmail.com> writes:
>>>
>>>
>>>> Sad day, and sadder still when it does run on win32.
>>>
>>>
>>> Are you made out of wet blankets and bile?
>>>
>> Apparently not:
>> http://www.tilton-technology.com/rogercormannyc3.html
>> Are you made of adhominium?
>> I made a remark about how the community choses to allocate scarce
>> resources. It is pretty abstract cuz of course we are all free to do as
>> we please, and of course there is no community. In fact, I was just
>> counterbalancing a rather bizarre dancing-in-the-streets phenomenon
>> over I-am-not-sure-what accomplishment with an admittedly dubious
>> point: exactly what drives the development of CMUCL/SBCL when we have
>> not-all that-expensive pro licenses for LW and ACL, as well as utterly
>> free CLisp with aewsome FFI, MOP, and more?
>
> Your remark was not really about Common Lisp per se, and the topic is
> known to cause heated discussions / flames, with no realistic chance of
> achieving an agreement in the end.
>
> Could your remark be classified as trolling?
>
> Just asking...
>
>
> Pascal
>
Ken has gone trolling recenty despite his dedication to fighting trolls.
He has become what he fears.. lol
Perhaps we should just stick to programming.
Alex Mizrahi
(you :wrote :on '(Fri, 01 Dec 2006 13:07:04 +0100))
(
JT> I fail to see the comparison. .NET is a ibrary which is language
JT> independent
JT> automatizing some of the managament necessary under COM.
.net is a buzzword for a set of technologies.
i meant mainly the Common Language Infrastructure -- basically it's a
byte-code interpreter/JIT-compiler standartized by ECMA.
it appears to be less braindamaged than Java -- you can make object files
other than "class" files.
and it's a programming language -- C#, i think it's most popular with .net.
there is a totally free implementation -- Mono
(http://www.mono-project.com/Main_Page). they have all the libraries,
compilers, runtime environments.
JT> Java's cross compatible libraries
JT> makes it popular. How does Lisp compete? Lisp can also use .NET and
JT> Java libraries.
i'd like to see lisp runtime environment as solid as Java's and .net's.
Java is designed to be runned on multi-processor multi-core systems at it's
full speed. it has 4+ types GCs -- including parrallel ones (for example, on
Sun Fire T2000 server that is able to schedule 32 threads, SUN is running GC
in 8 threads), low-pause and incremental.
is there lisp "runtime environment" with comparable characteristics? well,
Scieneer Common Lisp is meant to run on multiple processors, but it costs
about 3000$ per installation, while Java and .net installations are free.
there's a lot of libraries for web development in lisp, but can they deliver
same stability and performance as Java and .net?
i've evaluated UCW running on SBCL -- it's simply slow. sometimes it does
"full gc" that stops execution for a few seconds. sometimes it just
crashes.. :-/
you say i should buy a commercial implementation? maybe, but it doesn't
scale to multiple cores, so what a hell should i if i can get Java or .net
for free -- and does it better?
i'm currently using Armed Bear Common Lisp implementation that runs on top
of JVM. i've hacked a small 'web-framework' that is very good for
prototyping. if i'll find that it's too unstable for production environment,
i can switch to pure Java.
so here is how Common Lisp competes with Java.
Bill Atkins
> One of the rules of company developement is to keep the costs of
> initial developement
> to a minimum.
Yes, to an extent. But if spending a little more money up front will
get you a working product faster than your competition, spending a
little extra is well worth it.
> Only people that don't need money get easy loans. So
> this is a major show
> stopper. If you spend 20 000$ on software before developing anything
> (which is easy)
> you are going for a big fall if you fail.
I think there's a pretty serious difference between your $20000 and
the $1300 that we're discussing. $1300 is enough to squeeze under the
credit limit of most credit cards, if you can't get a loan.
It's very common to take out large loans when going into business. A
retail store needs to finance its building and its initial inventory.
Building a factory requires huge amounts of capital. Only a rare few
can finance a business's startup entirely out of their savings.
Charlton Wilbur
JW> Once people focus on that free solution, however, it usually
JW> doesn't take long until it is no longer inferior.
>> So I think we can agree that the availability of a free, "good
>> enough" solution will be attractive to many people, and will
>> drive business away from companies that are producing
>> high-caliber software, but have to recoup the costs of
>> development.
JW> As others have already pointed out, they can recoup the costs
JW> of development by other means, like selling support and
JW> services. Many companies do this with free software.
And, if the architecture of the free software is decent and it's
licensed in a way that allows it, the high-caliber software company
can use the free, "good enough" solution for some things, improve on
it in others, and combine it with custom high-caliber software as
appropriate.
Your argument would have me believe that Mac OS X, as an example,
would be *better* if Apple had built it from the ground up as
proprietary software, rather than building on the open-source BSDs. I
offer you OS 9 and the Copland project as counterexamples: the former
was collapsing under its own weight and the legacy of design decisions
that made a lot more sense in 1984 or 1991 than they did in 2001, and
the latter was the failed attempt at re-engineering the former from
the ground up.
The thing actually sucking the money that would otherwise pay the cost
of development out of the software market is the GPL, which says you
can't take software licensed under the GPL, modify it, and release the
changes without also releasing the source code. This means that if
any high-value change to the software has to be paid for in advance;
you can't produce the change and then sell it to make up the
development cost, because the first person you sell it to can
redistribute it for free under the terms of the license. This is
intentional, and is widely considered a feature by those who do not
depend on selling software to make a living.
Charlton
--
Charlton Wilbur
cwi...@chromatico.net
Charlton Wilbur
KT> You free-free-free people simply never imagine the vendor's
KT> postion in a world where Lisp is still a niche market. This
KT> language is a commercial, competitive, productivity grand slam
KT> and two vendors are providing extraordinary implementations
KT> and add-ons and you are bleating about the cost?!
And yet, when Franz wanted to charge you royalties, you went to a
cheaper vendor.
Can't you imagine Franz's position? The language is a productivity
grand slam and they are offering you an extraordinary implementation
and add-ons, and you had the GALL to choose a different vendor based
on COST.
Pot, kettle, black.
Robert Uhl
>>
>> But society hasn't regressed--folks have free cars, leaving them more
>> funds to invest in more useful things.
>
> Sure it has. Society is accepting inferior products and people who
> formerly would have bought cars can't help but opt for the free one.
If costly cars offered value for money, people would pay for them. That
they would not do so indicates that those features obviously aren't
worth enough to them.
Henry Ford put an awful lot of handmade car manufacturers out of
business, and I daresay that a handmade car is in many ways better than
one manufactured on an assembly line. And yet it seems that most people
are happier with inferior cars for less money.
And in the software realm, it typically seems that the inferior software
is proprietary and the superior is free, which is even better. I'm a
Unix sysadmin--while the proprietary Unixes are slightly more stable
than Linux or *BSD, their userlands are embarrassing--beyond
embarrassing, even: they're an insult to any sane admin. And yet things
today are no better than they were half-a-decade ago.
Meanwhile Linux and *BSD offer more pleasant userlands and are quickly
getting more stable.
More to the point: SBCL offers part of what the proprietary Lisp
implementations offer; if the additional features are actually
worthwhile, people with either pay for them or reimplement them.
Meanwhile everyone has access to a good-quality Common Lisp
implementation, which is hardly a bad thing.
In fact, I would go so far as to argue that a free language
implementation, while neither necessary nor sufficient, greatly
increases a language's chances of success nowadays. There are other
ways, e.g. marketing (how Java succeeded) or muscle (how C# appears to
be succeeding), but being free certainly appears to have helped Perl,
Python, Ruby, Objective-C and so forth.
--
Robert Uhl <http://public.xdi.org/=ruhl>
After you've heard two eyewitness accounts of an accident, it makes you
wonder about history. --Dave Barry
Chris Parker
> "Javier" <jav...@gmail.com> writes:
>
> > That's nice! Isn't it crude capitalism? :-)
> > Or, do you want to regulate people when they produce free software if
> > they want to? This is closer to socialism, communism and corporatism.
> > I clearly prefer freedom.
>
> Whoa, where did I say government should regulate this? In fact, where
> did I say that anything at all should be done about the situation?
>
> > Stop there! Cars need to be assembled, and the material of every unit
> > cost money.
> > Software has no material, and does not need to be assembled if you
> > want, so your analogy is completely incorrect.
>
> All analogies are incorrect, by definition. But it doesn't matter if
> the cost of software (time and talent) is fixed or variable. There
> are still costs, even if those costs are fixed and even if they don't
> involve purchasing material.
>
> > And look at Franz... are they making profit because their software is
> > closed, or because they are doing support and consulting? ...think
> > about it.
>
> Both? People that don't want support and consulting still pay Franz
> (lots of) money to use their software.
No offense, I don't think that you really have thought out your
argument very well.
Markets change, and so do business models. The fact is that a good
deal of the market is moving towards FOSS (Free/Open Source) software.
Software distribution over the internet has gotten very cheap, and a
lot of companies and individuals have figured out that they can save a
whole lot of money and time polling resources. Sure, this sucks for
many software companies that are used to making proprietary software
that has free alternatives, but the software industry is constantly
evolving.
I have worked with companies that have used FOSS software to their
advantage: selling services, taking an application and improving it for
their own use (and contributing the source back). I have been paid to
make improvements to FOSS software, and there are businesses that make
money selling and supporting it.
I don't see how FOSS is hurting the market. It has opened it up for a
lot of companies. There will always be companies that sell proprietary
software, and there will be others who compete with them.
You could flood the market with poorly made cheap or even free cars. I
doubt that Mercedes, BMW, or Lexus would be hit too hard. They sell
cheap fake cheese at my grocery store that almost tastes like cheese,
but I (and a lot of you, from the insane amount of cheese choices
available) still pay more to eat the real stuff.
Chris
Ken Tilton
Charlton Wilbur wrote:
>>>>>>"KT" == Ken Tilton <kent...@gmail.com> writes:
>
>
> KT> You free-free-free people simply never imagine the vendor's
> KT> postion in a world where Lisp is still a niche market. This
> KT> language is a commercial, competitive, productivity grand slam
> KT> and two vendors are providing extraordinary implementations
> KT> and add-ons and you are bleating about the cost?!
>
> And yet, when Franz wanted to charge you royalties,
No, "when we could not come to terms", and I do plan to try again
because of the added value they offer.
By the way, in giving examples of royalties I meant to mention the
on-line store people (and, shucks, why not the CC companies themselves?)
who all will have their hands in my pocket for 2-3%.
As I looked at all the hands in my pocket I decided, wtf, zero-percent
runtime royalty is not necessary. Of all the entities dipping in, Franz
is the one contributing most to my success if I start using AllegroCache
and any other proprietary goodies they offer. Also their support is
free. Granted, I am the one usually supporting them by reporting bugs in
the IDE (never a show-stopper), but come on, /someday/ even the Great
Kenny will have a problem he cannot fix, right?
>... you went to a
> cheaper vendor.
But not a free one, and I did not go home and write a lisp.
Besides, your mental image is wrong. If things do not work out, one
could also argue that Franz chased me out of their shop by not budging
in negotiations. I thought I made a good case, they told me where to get
off. I have argued in this forum before that they probably know what
they are doing since they are making money with a dead language, so
there ain't no good guys, there ain't no bad guys, we just disagree. Who
was it who said, "It's just business?"
>
> Can't you imagine Franz's position? The language is a productivity
> grand slam and they are offering you an extraordinary implementation
> and add-ons, and you had the GALL to choose a different vendor based
> on COST.
You are shouting because your argument is not really working, is it?
SBCL developers are not looking at cost. If they were, they would buy a
license for the tax-deductible cost of twelve hours work. I think we
have been over this a few times.
>
> Pot, kettle, black.
>
Left as an exercise: sweeping up the debris of your shattered argument.
:)
George Neuner
<udod...@users.sourceforge.net> wrote:
>(message (Hello 'Tim)
>(you :wrote :on '(Thu, 30 Nov 2006 23:18:31 +0000))
>(
>
> TB> This explains everything. Some bloody bunch of hippies have taken them
> TB> over (I mean, look at that Schwartz guy, hair down to his waist) & are
> TB> busy caring about `the community' when they should be caring about `the
> TB> shareholders'. Kick em out and replace them with Bill Gates, I say.
> TB> You don't see him doing this whole open-source thing, do you now?
>
>hell no, Microsoft gives their compiler for free, charging only for
>additional libraries and IDE.
>you can create applications using Microsoft tools for free.
>Microsoft cares that there are a lot of applications for Windows.
Microsoft giving away tools is a new deal. Up until 2003, Microsoft
considered developer tools and, in particular, API documentation to be
a revenue source just like any other.
And the price of support has gone up ... the professional edition of
VS2003 with MSDN subscription cost about $900 (I'd have to look up the
bill to be sure but $899 sticks in my brain), the current professional
edition of VS2005 with MSDN subscription costs $1199.
The free tools come with zero support.
I don't know about you, but using MSDN on the web is about as much fun
as pulling teeth. The only times it works acceptably are when the US
and Europe are sleeping. Buying it on DVD for $799/yr is all but a
necessity if you want decent access.
George
--
for email reply remove "/" from address
thetza
Windows I'm using Linux from a web interface. The thought of web apps
slowly but steadily replacing desktop apps tends to make Windows
fanboys wet their pants b/c it marginalizes them. And if I were someone
who paid untold thousands for a Lisp implementation which doesn't even
support true SMP multithreading, I wouldn't be criticizing other
implementations. And Lispworks and Franz aren't charities. If they
can't keep up with free alternatives they deserve to go out of
business.
Ken Tilton wrote:
> quig...@gmail.com wrote:
> > Lars Rune Nøstdal wrote:
> >
> >>SBCL has just turned 1.0!
> >
> >
> > A big congrats goes out to the dev team. SBCL is an awesome
> > implementation =)
>
> Rubbish. No IDE and runs on like 5% of the world's computers. After a
> quarter frickin century. Typical academic self-absorbed
> non-accomplishment. Say what you will about commercial software, the
> need to eat has no substitute when it comes to productivity.
>
> Python wins because GvR was man enough to realize the wasted brainpower
> going into replacing lambda and back down. Lisp loses because the best
> and the brightest young Lisp turks are just trying to drive Franz and
> Lispworks out of business when there is so much other amazing code to be
> written.
>
> Sad day, and sadder still when it does run on win32.
>
> kzo
Bill Atkins
> No offense, I don't think that you really have thought out your
> argument very well.
Perhaps so. I'm somewhat biased by my own experiences. I ran Linux
and various other open-source packages for four years. I now feel
like I wasted a tremendous amount of time trying to get half-assed
stuff to work and putting up with a computer that wasn't as useful as
it could be.
> Markets change, and so do business models. The fact is that a good
> deal of the market is moving towards FOSS (Free/Open Source) software.
> Software distribution over the internet has gotten very cheap, and a
> lot of companies and individuals have figured out that they can save a
> whole lot of money and time polling resources. Sure, this sucks for
> many software companies that are used to making proprietary software
> that has free alternatives, but the software industry is constantly
> evolving.
Free software is not part of the market, since nothing is being
exchanged for it. It would be more like a public good.
> I have worked with companies that have used FOSS software to their
> advantage: selling services, taking an application and improving it for
> their own use (and contributing the source back). I have been paid to
> make improvements to FOSS software, and there are businesses that make
> money selling and supporting it.
>
> I don't see how FOSS is hurting the market. It has opened it up for a
> lot of companies. There will always be companies that sell proprietary
> software, and there will be others who compete with them.
>
> You could flood the market with poorly made cheap or even free cars. I
> doubt that Mercedes, BMW, or Lexus would be hit too hard. They sell
True. But the many, many people who realize they could save 15k by
going for the free car would make an appreciable impact on the market.
> cheap fake cheese at my grocery store that almost tastes like cheese,
> but I (and a lot of you, from the insane amount of cheese choices
> available) still pay more to eat the real stuff.
But the cheese still has a price. It is not free.
Bill Atkins
> If costly cars offered value for money, people would pay for them. That
> they would not do so indicates that those features obviously aren't
> worth enough to them.
But they do offer value for the money; their price gets distorted when
you have someone giving away cars for free.
> Henry Ford put an awful lot of handmade car manufacturers out of
> business, and I daresay that a handmade car is in many ways better than
> one manufactured on an assembly line. And yet it seems that most people
> are happier with inferior cars for less money.
Handmade cars are also so hard to make that the only company who makes
cars that way now is Rolls Royce (AFAIK). But you also have to pay
like $400,000.
The assembly line lets car companies make more cars, so more people
can get transportation. This is good. The crucial thing is that even
companies that use the assembly line don't give their cars away for
free.
I really regret making this car analogy.
> After you've heard two eyewitness accounts of an accident, it makes you
> wonder about history. --Dave Barry
:-)
Bill Atkins
"thetza" <the...@mm.st> writes:
> Runs on 5% of the world's computer? Every time I run a google search on
> Windows I'm using Linux from a web interface. The thought of web apps
> slowly but steadily replacing desktop apps tends to make Windows
> fanboys wet their pants b/c it marginalizes them. And if I were someone
Or because web interfaces are so hideous compared to native
interfaces. Or because web programming is harder than it has to be
because of HTTP, HTML, differences between browsers, etc.
> implementations. And Lispworks and Franz aren't charities. If they
> can't keep up with free alternatives they deserve to go out of
> business.
Hehehe.
Ken Tilton
thetza wrote:
> Runs on 5% of the world's computer? Every time I run a google search on
> Windows I'm using Linux from a web interface.
Does this explain why it is so frickin impossible to work with GMail?
Start-stop typing, sooooo much fun.
Sorry, Charlie, Web apps ain't there yet. It'll be fun when they are...
of course maybe the problem is that Google uses Python?
:)
Rob Thorpe
> Robert Uhl <eadm...@NOSPAMgmail.com> writes:
>
> > If costly cars offered value for money, people would pay for them. That
> > they would not do so indicates that those features obviously aren't
> > worth enough to them.
>
> But they do offer value for the money; their price gets distorted when
> you have someone giving away cars for free.
>
> > Henry Ford put an awful lot of handmade car manufacturers out of
> > business, and I daresay that a handmade car is in many ways better than
> > one manufactured on an assembly line. And yet it seems that most people
> > are happier with inferior cars for less money.
>
> Handmade cars are also so hard to make that the only company who makes
> cars that way now is Rolls Royce (AFAIK). But you also have to pay
> like $400,000.
>
> The assembly line lets car companies make more cars, so more people
> can get transportation. This is good. The crucial thing is that even
> companies that use the assembly line don't give their cars away for
> free.
What is the difference between the a price differential between two
items where both have finite price, and another price differential
where one of the items is free?
You seem to be saying one of them is a part of the market system and
the other is a distortion of the market. I don't really see much
difference between them. Whether either are considered distortions is
very much a matter of point-of-view.
Tim Bradshaw
<udod...@users.sourceforge.net> said:
> you say i should buy a commercial implementation? maybe, but it doesn't
> scale to multiple cores, so what a hell should i if i can get Java or
> .net for free -- and does it better?
Well, do that then. For fucks sake just STOP WHINING.
justinhj
> On 30 Nov 2006 13:23:33 -0800, "justinhj" <just...@gmail.com> tried to confuse
> everyone with this message:
> (require :asdf-install) seems to load it without errors. However making
> asdf-install work under Windows requires some hacking. It downloads packages
> just fine, but then fails to unpack them, or something. I think it's easier to
> grab asdf-extensions.lisp from Lispbox and use it to install stuff.
>
Ah that works thanks. I don't really care if asdf-install can download
and install stuff, just as long as I can compile and run it by pointing
it at the directories the .asd's are in. Which I can't seem to get
working as yet.
Justin
Pillsy
Bill Atkins wrote:
> Perhaps so. I'm somewhat biased by my own experiences. I ran Linux
> and various other open-source packages for four years. I now feel
> like I wasted a tremendous amount of time trying to get half-assed
> stuff to work and putting up with a computer that wasn't as useful as
> it could be.
Isn't this kind of a counter-example to your original point, about
people settling for half-assed (or 70%-assed) stuff 'cause it's free?
After all, you didn't.
Cheers,
Pillsy
Charlton Wilbur
KT> By the way, in giving examples of royalties I meant to mention
KT> the on-line store people (and, shucks, why not the CC
KT> companies themselves?) who all will have their hands in my
KT> pocket for 2-3%.
KT> As I looked at all the hands in my pocket I decided, wtf,
KT> zero-percent runtime royalty is not necessary. Of all the
KT> entities dipping in, Franz is the one contributing most to my
KT> success if I start using AllegroCache and any other
KT> proprietary goodies they offer.
Right. What's the *qualitative* difference between that and someone
looking at all the hands in his pocket and deciding wtf, license fees
for software are not necessary when there's a free alternative that
gives an acceptable boost to productivity?
>> ... you went to a cheaper vendor.
KT> But not a free one, and I did not go home and write a lisp.
Free is just the asymptotic limit of cheaper.
And in your position, given what your goals are, writing a Lisp
yourself from scratch would have been very cost-ineffective.
Contributing a feature to a free Lisp, on the other hand....
>> Can't you imagine Franz's position? The language is a
>> productivity grand slam and they are offering you an
>> extraordinary implementation and add-ons, and you had the GALL
>> to choose a different vendor based on COST.
KT> You are shouting because your argument is not really working,
KT> is it?
No, I'm shouting because I'm mocking you. That was nearly a
word-for-word copy of what you said in your post, and it works about
as well when I say it in mockery as it does when you say it with a
straight face. That was the point.
KT> SBCL developers are not looking at cost. If they were, they
KT> would buy a license for the tax-deductible cost of twelve
KT> hours work. I think we have been over this a few times.
I expect the SBCL developers know damn well how much licenses cost.
They're not doing it because it's cheaper; they're doing it because
they believe the reward (a non-proprietary Lisp implementation, not
tied to the whims of any one vendor) is worth the effort.
If the commercial Lisp vendors can't offer more value than a free Lisp
assembled by a team of enthusiasts in their spare time, they deserve
to go out of business. Shouting at the volunteers doesn't change this.
Tim Bradshaw
> Can't you imagine Franz's position? The language is a productivity
> grand slam and they are offering you an extraordinary implementation
> and add-ons, and you had the GALL to choose a different vendor based
> on COST.
You know, it's all about the cost, and Kenny actually, shockingly, has
*thought* about it. Probably he'd even done some of those horrible
calculations of what things actually cost, rather than just assuming
that it's free because they don't charge you for a copy of the software
or something.
Do you know what I did today? I spent about 3 hours printing out bar
codes, cutting them out with scissors, and sticking them onto LTO
tapes. And then peeling off most of them because the bloody PDF
printer thought it was a clever idea to scale the output slightly so
the robot could only read about 1 in 3 of them which took another hour
or 2.
I did this because the company thinks that 44p each for professionally
printed labels was too much to pay and some random bit of free software
will print them anyway.
So let's see how much they save each week, shall we? Say we go through
50 tapes a week, that's a saving of, well, £22. Oh, but 4 hours a week
with paper and scissors at, well, quite a lot more than £22 an hour.
And let's hope that the labels don't fall off inside the library and
get in the works causing all the backups to fail (may be Sun will even
not charge for pulling all the bits of label out of the thing).
Damn, you have no idea how much I wish people had basic (basic)
economic literacy. They should teach it instead of CS, it would be a
lot more useful.
--tim
thetza
application, most of those 95% of users would have no reason to choose
a full blown desktop machine (full of bugs, blue screens, crashes,
malware, viruses, lost data) over a simple internet appliance with a
web browser. Why do you think so many people put up with uglier
interface over desktop GUI's? (Thats a rhetorical question. Everyone
knows your answer will be condescending.) Jealous? Write a GUI toolkit
which makes an application as easy to install/upgrade and as portable
as a web application. Oh wait, your idea of a cross-platform GUI
toolkit is celtk,n/m.
Pillsy
Alex Mizrahi wrote:
[...]
> is there lisp "runtime environment" with comparable characteristics? well,
> Scieneer Common Lisp is meant to run on multiple processors, but it costs
> about 3000$ per installation, while Java and .net installations are free.
> you say i should buy a commercial implementation? maybe, but it doesn't
> scale to multiple cores, so what a hell should i if i can get Java or .net
> for free -- and does it better?
Huh? You just said SCL did scale to multiple cores. Where's the beef?
Besides, even if SCL is too expensive or whatever, your complaints
might be better directed at Lispworks, Franz and Corman. The more money
they think they're leaving on the table by not having threading that's
competitive with .Net and Java, the more likely they are to do
something about it.
Cheers,
Pillsy
Ken Tilton
Those, btw, are always sooooo clever on Usenet.
> ...of what you said in your post, and it works about
> as well when I say it in mockery as it does when you say it with a
> straight face. That was the point.
No, the point is that your attempt at a reversal was fundamentally an
analogy, and those are a waste of time when it comes to discussions
because one then has to argue over the accuracy of the analogy. That is
like a bottomless slippery slope.
You might as well give up on your attempted rhetorical stunt and just
talk about the issues. Then you might have come up with a telling point,
such as "was it worth it for Kenzo to spend all that time on Cello just
to avoid getting locked into Franz's..." but then I am not sure how to
finish that because Franz does not have a GUI for OSX (and Cells-Gtk did
not exist when i did Cello).
You'd lose anyway because I already wonder if I made that mistake (and I
am considering it a mistake if I can fill in that blank with something
-- CAPI is a candidate, but then that still means dumping Franz).
I am trying to save your argument, but getting nowhere. Maybe if I start
pitching in on Rucksack instead of using AllegroCache? Esp. since
Rucksack seems not to be ready for prime time. Yeah, that would do it.
I'll let you know if I do that, then you can bring out your cookware
<sigh> analogy.
:)
hth, kzo
Tim Bradshaw
> When someone writes a decent word processor and spreadsheet web
> application, most of those 95% of users would have no reason to choose
> a full blown desktop machine (full of bugs, blue screens, crashes,
> malware, viruses, lost data) over a simple internet appliance with a
> web browser.
This explains nicely why people moved in such large numbers from
stateless desktops to PCs 10-15 years ago. or .. maybe not.
Charlton Wilbur
TB> On 2006-12-01 16:48:58 +0000, Charlton Wilbur
TB> <cwi...@chromatico.net> said:
>> Can't you imagine Franz's position? The language is a
>> productivity grand slam and they are offering you an
>> extraordinary implementation and add-ons, and you had the GALL
>> to choose a different vendor based on COST.
TB> You know, it's all about the cost, and Kenny actually,
TB> shockingly, has *thought* about it. Probably he'd even done
TB> some of those horrible calculations of what things actually
TB> cost, rather than just assuming that it's free because they
TB> don't charge you for a copy of the software or something.
It *is* all about the cost. But Kenny doesn't want someone else
deciding that choosing a vendor who doesn't charge a license fee is an
acceptable way to reduce the cost. That's what I'm objecting to. He
can spend his own money any damnfool way he wants to; he just doesn't
get to tell me how to spend my money.
If it's acceptable and laudable for him to decide that he'll go with
vendor B because vendor B charges less than vendor A for the feature
set he wants or needs, where does he get off telling me that I *can't*
go with vendor C because vendor C charges less than vendor A or B for
the feature set that *I* want or need, simply because vendor C isn't
charging at all? "Free" is just the asymptotic limit of "cheaper."
Assuming that things cost *more* because you aren't charged a license
fee is just as fallacious as assuming that they cost *less*, and
assuming that the set of tradeoffs that is acceptable to you is
universally acceptable is just stupid.
Ken Tilton
thetza wrote:
> When someone writes a decent word processor and spreadsheet web
> application, most of those 95% of users would have no reason to choose
> a full blown desktop machine (full of bugs, blue screens, crashes,
> malware, viruses, lost data) over a simple internet appliance with a
> web browser.
And then it is OK for SBCL to run only 5% of the world's computers?
I am sorry, you have made on of the classic blunders of Usenet
discussion (the first is getting engaged in a land war in Iraq), and I
have encouraged you.
Your premise is that SBCL /effectively/ runs on win32, given Web apps.
This is like making an analogy. Now we have to argue over whether these
astonishing machines me have in front of us need only serve as thin
clients. Fortunately, this Rosemary-Woodian stretch* means you concede
my point, that SBCL does not run on 95% of the machines, so we agree.
Great!
kt
*
http://www.fordlibrarymuseum.gov/museum/exhibits/watergate_files/content.php?section=3&page=a&zoom=2
Bill Atkins
> If it's acceptable and laudable for him to decide that he'll go with
> vendor B because vendor B charges less than vendor A for the feature
> set he wants or needs, where does he get off telling me that I *can't*
> go with vendor C because vendor C charges less than vendor A or B for
> the feature set that *I* want or need, simply because vendor C isn't
> charging at all? "Free" is just the asymptotic limit of "cheaper."
I don't think that's true. If you're paying for a product, a company
has an incentive to provide support and fix bugs; if you don't pay,
they don't get your money, their reputation is diminished, and they
run the risk of going out of business or losing sales at a minimum.
If you're getting a product for free, the developers have no incentive
to help you out other than their own generosity. That's a pretty
fundamental difference.
Going to a cheaper vendor is still going to a vendor - someone who has
a vested interest in seeing that you, personally, do well.
Tim Bradshaw
> where does he get off telling me that I *can't*
> go with vendor C because vendor C charges less than vendor A or B for
> the feature set that *I* want or need, simply because vendor C isn't
> charging at all?
Did he do this? What I saw was:
Kenny: You free-free-free people simply never imagine the vendor's
postion in a world where Lisp is still a niche market. This language is
a commercial, competitive, productivity grand slam and two vendors are
providing extraordinary implementations and add-ons and you are
bleating about the cost?!
Telling people to stop bleating is not telling them anything other than
to, well, stop bleating. Get on and make the damn decision already,
whatever it is, and don't whine on usenet in other words.
--tim
Charlton Wilbur
>> ...of what you said in your post, and it works about as well
>> when I say it in mockery as it does when you say it with a
>> straight face. That was the point.
KT> No, the point is that your attempt at a reversal was
KT> fundamentally an analogy, and those are a waste of time when
KT> it comes to discussions because one then has to argue over the
KT> accuracy of the analogy. That is like a bottomless slippery
KT> slope.
Except that it's not a reversal, nor is it an analogy.
You chose one vendor over another because they both had the feature
set you were looking for, and one was cheaper than the other even
after taking into account the necessity of working around any missing
features in the cheaper implementation.
Why is it acceptable to do that if "cheaper" still involves money, but
not if "cheaper" is free?
Would SBCL be acceptable if they charged $1 for a license? $10? $100?
That's the issue that you're avoiding with all this smoke and mirrors
about analogies, and that I pointed out by restating your words to you.
pjd
Ken Tilton wrote:
> quig...@gmail.com wrote:
> > Lars Rune Nøstdal wrote:
> >
> >>SBCL has just turned 1.0!
>
Get over it. Open Source lisps are here and they are getting only
better.
Oh and get over yourself too.
People like the variety and the low barrier of entry offered by the
free lisps. (Do you think projects like GCC, Apache and Linux have made
the world a worse place?)
Shilling for Franz and LW aside, what is it you got against SBCL
developers anyway ?
Atleast Naggum had substance. Your constant sarcasm is a poor
substitute.
thetza
communists will write free software which will illegally steal market
share from Franz and you will be forced to go back to VB.
Ken Tilton
I think you might be missing the point. It is fine to /use/ SBCL, and
for all I know I could end up shipping with that on OS X (unlikely tho
with LW available so /reasonably/).
But if I trace a problem using SBCL /to/ SBCL and make a bug report and
someone from the dev team responds "The open source fairy has left the
building, we eagerly await your patch. You can download the sources
here, the build instructions here, and... hello? hello? Kenny?", I'll be
on the phone to Lispworks or begging Franz for forgiveness.
See, this is what happens when you get all riled up and change the
subject to whether Kenny is consistent or not, you get so emotional you
cannot read straight. And my inconsistency varies quite a bit, so I do
not know if you can build an argument on that anyway.
:)
kenzo
ps. Random problem cloning is going well, but obviously slowly enough to
have me dashing here to hide pretty regularly. :) What kind of Lisp did
you write today? k
Rajappa Iyer
The problem is that the people who are WHINING are the
anti-free-software folks. I refer you to a long thread about this
very issue from a few months ago: suffice to say that there is *ZERO*
quantifiable evidence that free software hurts the proprietary
software market. If you want to convince anyone who's not already
convinced, that would be a good place to start.
Oh and your argument about having to waste time on printing labels by
hand is not an argument against free software -- it is an argument
against management stupidity.
rsi
--
<r...@panix.com> a.k.a. Rajappa Iyer.
They also surf who stand in the waves.
Ken Tilton
pjd wrote:
> Ken Tilton wrote:
> Oh and get over yourself too.
>
> Shilling for Franz and LW aside,..
>
> Atleast Naggum had substance. Your constant sarcasm is a poor
> substitute.
>
thetza wrote:
> And your beloved Allegro CL will run on exactly 0% of machines b/c evil
> communists will write free software which will illegally steal market
> share from Franz and you will be forced to go back to VB.
I have always said it would be a good sign for Lisp when the
sophistication of the average bear posting here dropped -- the great
unwashed have arrived!
These two make up for yesterday's sad news. :)
kt
thetza
immature, over sensitive little punk. Do you have Aspergers or
something? We understand that you cannot grasp the concept of a free
market economy, but are you also physically incapable of understanding
that your opinions are not the words of God, that the world does not
revolve around you? The lisp user 'community' is so weak and younger
coders are scared away specifically b/c people like you, which is part
of the reason why your beloved AllegroCL costs so much. And no, you
weren't simply 'counterbalancing' the bizzare dancing in the street
phenomena. You were actively trying to belittle and bully others.
Ken Tilton wrote:
> David Steuber wrote:
> > Ken Tilton <kent...@gmail.com> writes:
> >
> >
> >>Sad day, and sadder still when it does run on win32.
> >
> >
> > Are you made out of wet blankets and bile?
> >
>
> Apparently not:
>
> http://www.tilton-technology.com/rogercormannyc3.html
>
> Are you made of adhominium?
>
> I made a remark about how the community choses to allocate scarce
> resources. It is pretty abstract cuz of course we are all free to do as
> we please, and of course there is no community. In fact, I was just
> counterbalancing a rather bizarre dancing-in-the-streets phenomenon over
> I-am-not-sure-what accomplishment with an admittedly dubious point:
> exactly what drives the development of CMUCL/SBCL when we have not-all
> that-expensive pro licenses for LW and ACL, as well as utterly free
> CLisp with aewsome FFI, MOP, and more?
>
> Is it the "I am looking for a free XXX" disease RMS unleashed on the
> software industry?
>
> Oh, sorry, I am back on topic, you wanted to roll around kicking and
> a-gouging in the mud and the blood and the beer. Nah, you gotta come to
> LispNYC meetings and get to me before the bouncers do.
>
> :)
>
> kzo
thetza
programmer?
> No, I am just goading them into finishing the win32 version. Then I stop
> sharing Cells and Cello and Celtk and build a proprietary cash machine
> atop their sweat. Giving them nothing. PWUAUAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAA!!!!!
Tim Bradshaw
>
> The problem is that the people who are WHINING are the
> anti-free-software folks.
Where did I even mention free software? I was just asking him to stop
whining. I don't care if he's pro free software, anti free software
(whatever those terms might mean), or a space alien. I just want him
to shut up and go away rather than sitting there complaining that he
can't get what he wants, since he can, in fact, get what he wants.
> Oh and your argument about having to waste time on printing labels by
> hand is not an argument against free software -- it is an argument
> against management stupidity.
Um, hello? Did you read the last paragraph? I'll repeat it. "Damn, you
have no idea how much I wish people had basic (basic) economic
literacy. They should teach it instead of CS, it would be a lot more
useful."
Now is that an argument against free software? No, it's not. It looks
like an argument for basic economic literacy to me.
So stop putting words in my mouth, why don't you?
--tim
Rajappa Iyer
> On 2006-12-01 22:27:50 +0000, Rajappa Iyer <r...@panix.com> said:
>>
>> The problem is that the people who are WHINING are the
>> anti-free-software folks.
>
> Where did I even mention free software? I was just asking him to stop
> whining. I don't care if he's pro free software, anti free software
> (whatever those terms might mean), or a space alien. I just want him
> to shut up and go away rather than sitting there complaining that he
> can't get what he wants, since he can, in fact, get what he wants.
OK. I re-read what you wrote and agree that you were even-handed about
telling whiners on either side to put a sock in it. :-)
Sorry for implying otherwise.
Charlton Wilbur
KT> But if I trace a problem using SBCL /to/ SBCL and make a bug
KT> report and someone from the dev team responds "The open source
KT> fairy has left the building, we eagerly await your patch. You
KT> can download the sources here, the build instructions here,
KT> and... hello? hello? Kenny?", I'll be on the phone to
KT> Lispworks or begging Franz for forgiveness.
Ah, but that's preferable to the situation I've been in before - I
trace the problem to the vendor, make a bug report, and the vendor
responds "Thanks, it's entered in our bug database."
At my first professional programming job, I tracked down a bug in the
shared library code in a certain OS. Proprietary OS, but we had a
magical support contract, so I filed a support request and included
the code needed to consistently reproduce it. They thanked us and
informed us that a fix was planned for a later release at an
unspecified date. This was a show-stopping bug; while it persisted,
we could not get our database to talk to our webserver.
But wait! We had paid umpty-thousand more for a source code license!
Armed with that and gdb, another programmer managed to find the line
of code with the bug and fix it! We then submitted a patch to the
vendor, who at least gave us credit when they finally got around to
issuing the update.
I don't know what we would have done without that support contract!
Thank goodness the vendor was responsive to our needs! I don't know
what would have happened if we had gone with an open-source operating
system with no support!
There are cases in which the feature set is so compelling that there
is no free alternative -- I use OS X on my desktop for that reason.
But I prefer the honest lack of a support guarantee, plus available
source code, to a guarantee of support that's only enforceable because
I can walk away from that product. If I have access to the source
code, I can fix the problem or pay someone else to fix it for me; if I
don't have access to the source code, I'm completely at the mercy of
the vendor. You apparently trust the vendor much more than I do.
pjd...@gmail.com
Ken Tilton wrote:
> pjd wrote:
> > Ken Tilton wrote:
>
> > Oh and get over yourself too.
> >
> > Shilling for Franz and LW aside,..
> >
> > Atleast Naggum had substance. Your constant sarcasm is a poor
> > substitute.
> >
>
> thetza wrote:
> > And your beloved Allegro CL will run on exactly 0% of machines b/c evil
> > communists will write free software which will illegally steal market
> > share from Franz and you will be forced to go back to VB.
>
> I have always said it would be a good sign for Lisp when the
> sophistication of the average bear posting here dropped -- the great
> unwashed have arrived!
>
> These two make up for yesterday's sad news. :)
Always having the last word is not same as being right.
Implementing a usable common lisp system is no mean task. If you cant
bring yourself to appreciate their efforts, at least you could have
kept your mouth shut and not turn the thread of their announcement into
this low grade flamefest.
Oh well, you are the master of insults and zingers. What chance any of
us have winning any argument?
Waiting for the inevitable last word ...
Ken Tilton
Charlton Wilbur wrote:
>>>>>>"TB" == Tim Bradshaw <t...@tfeb.org> writes:
>
>
> TB> On 2006-12-01 16:48:58 +0000, Charlton Wilbur
> TB> <cwi...@chromatico.net> said:
>
> >> Can't you imagine Franz's position? The language is a
> >> productivity grand slam and they are offering you an
> >> extraordinary implementation and add-ons, and you had the GALL
> >> to choose a different vendor based on COST.
>
> TB> You know, it's all about the cost, and Kenny actually,
> TB> shockingly, has *thought* about it. Probably he'd even done
> TB> some of those horrible calculations of what things actually
> TB> cost, rather than just assuming that it's free because they
> TB> don't charge you for a copy of the software or something.
>
> It *is* all about the cost. But Kenny doesn't want someone else
> deciding that choosing a vendor who doesn't charge a license fee is an
> acceptable way to reduce the cost. That's what I'm objecting to. He
> can spend his own money any damnfool way he wants to; he just doesn't
> get to tell me how to spend my money.
No, you are completely confused. I am arguing that the cost to the
developers of SBCL dwarfs the cost of LW/ACL, if only they understood
their time has value. I am trying to save them money. You? I don't know
what you are doing. You working on SBCL? How many hours you got in on
it? How do you price your time?
If they were working on cffi-grovel or a truly excellent cl-sockets or
even Ltk or Cells-Gtk, Lisp would have a larger customer base and Franz
and LW could try different prices. And every Lispnik would be more
productive (that has to do with the cost of doing business, you know).
I am the one talking about cost, you are just obsessing over Kenny. It
happens.
kt
bradb
> >>>>> "KT" == Ken Tilton <kentil...@gmail.com> writes: KT> But if I trace a problem using SBCL /to/ SBCL and make a bug
I also have had past experiences like Charlton. I have three
experiences with vendors/software.
1) Small company vendor. We paid a boatload of money for a file system
that "will just work". I spend many months getting it working and
feeding back bug fixes, it was obvious that their code had never run on
ARM processsor before. They were extremely receptive of the patches, I
had full code access and they rolled my fixes in. However, this was a
product we paid a lot of money for so that we wouldn't need to fix it,
and they got our fixes for free! We ended up ditching the system and
using an open source filesystem. Not really a bad experience, but not
good either.
2) Microsoft. I had partial access to code, which is the biggest issue
- you can't even really determine how to work around bugs. MS will
only talk to you if you pay them to or are a huge customer. Even when
we hand MS the backtraces, steps to reproduce and a possible fix they
may or may not look at it. If they do fix it, you don't get the fix
until the next release cycle and you can't ship your product until you
get the official MS binaries - ie, no way for us to patch it.
3) Linux kernel & other opensource projects. You have the code and you
are able to fix it given enough motivation. You may or may not get
help from mailing lists, but in generally it is pretty good. Your
patch if it is good will go into the main source. You don't need to
wait for the maintainer to bless the patch for you to ship.
Number 1 and 3 were pretty much the same in terms of support and
feedback, though giving time and effort to something that you paid big
money for hurts.
Trying to get support from MS is like getting blood from a stone.
So, like all things, it is not a case of Free Software is better/worse
than propriety software - it is shades of grey.
This thread started as a simple "well done for hitting 1.0, an
important milestone", but somehow got trolled into a free/propriety
flame fest.
Anyhow - well done to the SBCL devs. I appreciate the hard work you've
put in, and I'm glad you're all having fun working on free software.
Cheers
Brad