Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!yale!cmcl2!husc6!m2c!umvlsi!dime!kelly
From: Kelly@Vega
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Subject: Re: why lisp is dead
Message-ID: <12789@dime.cs.umass.edu>
Date: 11 Apr 90 01:37:09 GMT
References: <485@paradigm.com>
Sender: news@dime.cs.umass.edu
Organization: Computer and Information Science, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA
Lines: 33

In article <485@paradigm.com> gjc@paradigm.com writes:
>>So when I go to write an expert system at a startup-company
>>do I decide to use LISP?
>>
>>NO!
>>
>>Why? Mainly the unreasonable cost of the RUNTIME portion of a lisp.
>>
>>three costs:
>>(1) technical cost of the overly-complex and large runtime portions.
>>(2) financial cost-of-sales for runtime licenses.
>>(3) administrative costs of runtime licensing procedures.

>lgm@cbnewsc.ATT.COM (lawrence.g.mayka) replies
> Until the world is ready for Lisp machines...

Common Lisp is more of an Operating System than just a programming
language.  You certainly don't pay Lisp license fees for
applications delivered for a Symbolics or an Explorer.  
You assume that the delivery machine already has UNIX, or MS-DOS, or
whatever.  If you have to deliver your application with an Operating
System, you would certainly have to pay a license fee for the OS.
You are buying into the OS, not C, when you use C as your programming
language.  

Common Lisp is quite healthy.  In my opinion, the growth of UNIX, C and C++
is cancerous.
Common Lisp will be an Operating System.  When you start
writing programs that use multiprocessors and parallelism,
you will rapidly discover that UNIX and C are dead.

-Kelly Murray  (Top Level, Inc.)
 murray@cs.umass.edu