Scheme, manifesto and naming debates

[Tim Pierce]

1. I like Scheme.  Most of my experience is in Scheme -- a little
   in Emacs Lisp, almost no Common Lisp.  However, I'm not going
   to push to base the OS on Scheme; the veterans on this list
   have given a lot of good reasons to use CL instead, and it
   seems like the bulk of our experience is in that field.  We
   should go with a Common Lisp.  At some point I may want to do a
   Scheme-based OS anyway, but I'm willing to play with that idea
   on my own when the time comes.

2. A problem with a ``manifesto'' is that it needs to represent the
   driving force behind a project.  It needs to document first
   principles.  It shouldn't say that the project's *motivation*
   is to write an operating system based on Common Lisp, because
   Common Lisp is not a motivating factor for a lot of the people
   here; any Lisp will do for some of us.  It shouldn't say that
   the goal is to break Windows 95 when some of us simply want to
   get away from Unix.  There's not a lot that I think we can
   agree on as completely common goals: a Lisp-oriented free
   operating system is about as close as I think we can get.
   Dwight Hughes' draft is not bad; just strike ``Common'' from
   Lisp.

3. ``LispOS.''  I liked NIL too, but oh well.