[mcclim-devel] Vendor CLIMs

[C Y]

--- Rainer Joswig <joswig at lisp.de> wrote:
>
> Almost. Some applications are still using CLIM.
> 
> The last change that happened was that some people bought CLIM source
> rights (Alice Hartley of Digitool is one of those). Consequently
> Digitool offers a CLIM version that is also available with full 
> sources.
> 
> Both Franz and LispWorks are fixing bugs sometimes, but are not
> investing into new work with CLIM. Franz now ports ist toolkit from
> Windows to Linux and LispWorks does only CAPI anyway.

Perhaps I shouldn't suggest this, but a thought occurs...

If vendors are no longer developing CLIM, or even supporting it except
as a legacy standard, perhaps one or more of them might consider
releasing their code to McCLIM?  Since McCLIM is LGPL, there wouldn't
seem to be much of an issue with them including it in their future
releases, and they would get the benefit of any additional work McCLIM
does to improve things.  Also, they would get the additional benefit of
being able, with little to no additional effort, to run programs that
get developed with McCLIM on their own lisps without having to worry
about their own CLIM's compatibility.  (Granted the latter won't be an
issue unless customers demand it, but in case they do...)

Plus, even if CLIM is no longer the "modern" choice for lisp GUIs, it's
availablity as a robust, open source system may help spur lisp
development into a more mainstream mode.  Certainly lack of readily
usable graphics toolkits is one of the things most frequently cited as
a limitation of lisp.  If McCLIM can change that perception, wouldn't
that benefit everybody, commercial and free lisp vendors alike? 
Particularly if McCLIM works seamlessly across platforms - Java might
see a real (and truly open source!) competitor.  

They would seem to have at least a few things to gain and virtually
nothing to lose, given CLIM isn't where things are happening for their
commercial customers graphically.  Does this make sense to anybody else
or am I missing something obvious?

Cheers,
CY


		
____________________________________________________ 
Yahoo! Sports 
Rekindle the Rivalries. Sign up for Fantasy Football 
http://football.fantasysports.yahoo.com