Why [not] X?

[Mike McDonald]

>Date: Thu, 22 May 97 16:47 PDT
>From: Patrick Logan <patrickl@servio.gemstone.com>
>To: lispos@math.gatech.edu
>Subject: Re: Why [not] X? 
>
>>>>>> "Mike" == Mike McDonald <mikemac@titian.engr.sgi.com> writes:
>
>    Mike> Unlike most of the people on this list, Kelley is actually
>    Mike> doing something other than BSing about who's research
>    Mike> project is better than everyone else's...
>
>Well you'll get no apology from me. I'm still trying to determine what
>this thing is you're building.

  The thing some people are building is different from what some other
people are talking about.

>    Mike> Where's that browser running? If your machine is running a
>    Mike> lisp based OS, I doubt Netscape is going to work too
>    Mike> well. (Assuming only one machine. Having a second machine on
>    Mike> the net just to run a C based browser is cheating!)
>
>Just how much of the free world are you going to recreate over the
>next five years? If you can run Java, you can run HotJava. But it'd be
>better to focus on LispOS as a server and worry about LispOS as a
>client later. Take things for free while you can.

  Some of us are planning on using whatever we can "borrow" to get us
farther along the road. This includes using X via CLIM for the
graphics, Linux for the base OS in the short term, ACL for the lisp
until CMUCL is capable of supporting the project, Kelly's OODB for a
POS, ... There's a lot more to an "OS" than just kernel hacking.

  Mike McDonald
  mikemac@engr.sgi.com