[pro] Learning Lisp the Bump Free Way

[Sam Steingold]

On Thu, Jan 20, 2011 at 4:02 PM, Drew Crampsie <drewc at tech.coop> wrote:
>
> I do, however, think that comparing the work produced by the open
> source CL community to that produced by multi-billion dollar
> corporations is both unfair and counter-productive. Apple and Google
> have something to sell, and are aggressively attempting to sell it to
> both users and developers. Their /raison d'etre/ is to produce tools
> that are useful for the casual developer and used by the masses.
>
> The same can not be said of the Clozure team, the SBCL devs, the SLIME
> folk or us working slobs just trying to make a living using CL. If i
> had the resources of a mega-corporation behind me, do you think cliki
> would be held together with duct-tape and bubble gum, or
> common-lisp.net would look old and tired? Would the ALU wiki crash
> every few months and be generally a mess to work with? I'd like to
> think otherwise.
>
> The root of the perceived problem is a lack of resources, not a lack
> of effort or desire on the part of the "lisp community".

I think Franz, Lispworks, ITA et al are vital parts of the "lisp community".
I think the fact that none of them is paying anyone to maintain SLIME,
ALU wiki, common-lisp.net &c
is indicative of understandable but deplorable corporate myopia
("public goods cannot be produced by private businesses").

-- 
Sam Steingold <http://sds.podval.org>