platforms and interoperability and who is this stuff for

[Marcus G. Daniels]

>>>>> "CS" == Christopher Stacy <cstacy@pilgrim.com> writes:

CS> I keep hearing people say "Linux" and stuff.

CS> UNIX flavors represents are an insignificant and dwindling
CS> percentage ofcomputers in all areas.  I'm not trying to offend
CS> anyone, just noting a simple fact.

Linux is important not as a Unix flavor, but because it is an example
of a large, free, working body of code that goes all the way down to
the (diverse) hardware.  If you look for people cooperating to write free
software, you will find that terms like "Linux" and "GNU" comes up
much more frequency than "Windows 95".  That's the reason Unix is
relevant: stuff that works and people that understand it.

CS> Given that, does it make sense to use that as the base for
CS> whatever all this futuristic stuff is supposed to be?

I think so.

CS> Shouldn't we be talking about how this new wonderfulness is going
CS> to work with (or replace) Windows NT?  (I realize probably nobody
CS> here voted to elect Bill Gates to "God", but there he sits.)

There isn't really isn't much C code in CMU-CL, porting it to Win32
wouldn't be very hard.  If to an extent we temporarily attach ourselves
to other Unix things, no big deal, there's the gnu-win32 toolkit to
provide a Unix API.

IMO, using some Unix parts is a smaller obstacle to developer
acceptance than using Common Lisp.  As for commercial utility, please
read the article titled "Applications".