One of the reasons I started with maxima was the failure of Macsyma,
Inc. to support their code.
I would have to see what changes to the maxima code base would have to
be made to work
with Allegro, and if it would cause incompatibility with clisp or
cmucl. Also, I am loath to
create a gui using some proprietary toolkit. As far as I am concerned,
I dont care what kind of
lisp I use, I just dont like seeing emails complaining about the failure
of gcl to build. However,
I am leaning toward steelbank, which is a offshoot of cmucl, as its goal
is maintainability.
I think whichever free lisp machine code compiler which gets to windows
first will
win, in the same way that gcc is the default enviornment for a lot of
people.
Dan Stanger
Richard Fateman wrote:
> I think that Schelter contributed some code
> that runs only in GCL or is linked to GCL through
> foreign function interface that makes some procedures
> run far faster than expected. If you are not using
> these procedures, the difference would not be visible.
> I do not know where these are used but I suspect
> polynomial factorization.
>
> I have explored with Franz Inc the possibility of
> their providing a base of Allegro CL for Maxima
> development.
>
> Advantage: supported ANSI CL on Windows, Mac OS-X, many
> different UNIX and linux systems, many extras like
> graphics, web support, etc. (see franz.com).
>
> Disadvantage: it does not come with source code.
> Disadvantage: there will be presumably SOME restriction
> on this so that they are not giving away their main
> source of revenue free. Yet this may not be much of
> a restriction since Franz already gives away a rather complete
> lisp free (minus some compiler features and maybe a
> maximum memory limit, plus.. one must re-register periodically...).
> The free "student" version does not
> include (I think) the full compiler (just compiles in-core,
> not producing files), and I think does not support
> new foreign function linkages. I think that both
> these restrictions would have to be lifted to be
> viable.
>
> My guess is that it will be something like
>
> the free lisp + enough extra resources to include all
> of maxima code + enough free space to continue to make it
> interesting.
>
> I don't know how people here feel about this.
> Possible reactions
>
> 1. Yes, let's do it. It makes our lives simpler.
> (We still need to understand what restrictions we
> can live with.)
>
> 2. No, only open-source GPL code allowed here.
>
> 3. It's just another Lisp, along with GCL etc to support.
> Do it if you want to.
>
> 4. Something else.
>
> If you are inclined towards reaction 1, we still
> need to make our list of "non-negotiable demands".
> They must be such that Franz Inc's business is
> placed in jeopardy. If we use this code it is
> in our best interests that the company remain profitable.
>
> RJF
>
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