Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
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From: cracauer@wavehh.hanse.de (Martin Cracauer)
Subject: Re: ACL for Linux
Message-ID: <1996Dec11.130506.15817@wavehh.hanse.de>
Reply-To: cracauer@wavehh.hanse.de
Organization: Internet Breakdown Task Force
References: <584uv9$knh@grandcanyon.binc.net> <wku3q0ohbp.fsf@servtech.com> 	<s08afrrqzd9.fsf@salmon.ICSI.Berkeley.EDU> 	<58a6vv$aaf@fido.asd.sgi.com> <58c7v3$ove@tandem.CAM.ORG> 	<32AB57FD.6CAA@franz.com> <wkenh0tkxn.fsf@servtech.com> 	<ajohg45bpa.fsf@surt.ifi.uio.no> <s08k9qpu8fu.fsf@crawdad.ICSI.Berkeley.EDU>
Date: Wed, 11 Dec 96 13:05:06 GMT
Lines: 88

Marco Antoniotti <marcoxa@crawdad.icsi.berkeley.edu> writes:

>rmz@ifi.uio.no (Bjrn Remseth) writes:

>> 
>> 
>> 
>> [ mucit@servtech.com ]
>> 
>> > What's entailed in that port?  I'd be happy to pay $250 for 4.3 under
>> > Linux, with CLIM, fi, and the composer tools.  I'd also be happy to pay 
>> > reasonable royalties for the runtime if I ever deliver executables.  My 
>> > hunch would be that I'm not the only one (make noises people).  
>> 
>> *noise*, *noise*.

>There is a simple way to get people to port CLIM to Linux (and other
>systems).

>       Get the sorce code (with comments) in the public domain.

>CLIM appears for GCL, CMUCL, ECL, ACL on Linux and, after all the Lisp
>community will have something to boast about.

Not that I expect that porting to be easy. At least the
threading/processes subset of CLIM is hard to support in free Lisps. I
looked into the technical challenges to implement them, they're
certainly not easy to do as long as you want to keep your debugger,
editor environment and other unimportant tools.

Can CLIM run on a single-process Lisp, as a subset like Garnet does? 

An additional problem is that vendors and free developers will have to
agree on a way to keep the sources, otherwise new development will
divert. But tools like CVS make that possible.

>Is this asking too much?  Has anybody at Franz and Harlequin done any
>comparative study from what their CLIM related revenues would be when
>fueled by a (hopefully) expanded user base and what they are actually
>getting now?

I once bought Lispworks and thought over getting CLIM as well. Amoung
other reasons, I didn't because I wanted my code to be portable to
CMUCL as well.

I targetted on using Garnet instead, because:
- I can run Garnet code on CMUCL
- I have the source, so I can learn from it
- I felt CLIM to be is rather expensive, compared to the price of the
  whole Lispworks environment.

The point was irrelevant before I did something serious because I've
been driven more into the networking business. But over here, CLIM has
some potential that should be used.

The possibility to extend CLIM with a Java backend has been
discussed. This work isn't done by "official" CLIM vendors. So, if we
want that code, we will have to hope for free software developers and
those usually prefer to work on free code.

I know, today everyone want everyone else to free their code, but let
me say I certainly not a random Linux advocat and I have nothing
against people selling software without source. 

But in this case I could imagine that the income from selling the base
Lisp systems and providing support for the base Lisp and CLIM could
outweight the missing sales of the CLIM system.

Classes of people I think of:
- People leaving MCL because CLIM support is insufficient and - even
  worse - future support is questionable.
- people like me who use one commercial Lisp for themself and use free
  Lisp systems elsewhere.
- An unknown number of people seeking for any acceptable solution to
  use a java-capable browser as a GUI-frontend for a server that
  reserves the right to drive the application.
- People learning Lisp on free systems.
- unknown effects when a Java-backend becomes reality.

In a word, if a free Linux version makes sense, a free CLIM certainly
will also.

Martin
-- 
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
Martin_Cracauer@wavehh.hanse.de http://cracauer.cons.org  Fax.: +4940 5228536
"As far as I'm concerned,  if something is so complicated that you can't ex-
 plain it in 10 seconds, then it's probably not worth knowing anyway"- Calvin
