Lisp Machine Emulators?

[Christopher J. Vogt]

At 2:04 PM -0600 3/20/98, P. T. Withington wrote:
>On 3/20/98 13:02, Kragen wrote:
>
>>On Fri, 20 Mar 1998, P. T. Withington wrote:
>>> Symbolics is currently in limbo, but it would be a great service to the
>>> Lisp community if the assets were put into the public domain.
>>> Unfortunately, the sources are the primary documentation of all the great
>>> work that went on there; there is very little written documentation about
>>> the evolution of the technology.
>>
>>It would be nice if this could have happened before they went
>>bankrupt.  Would this be legal?  It might be interpreted as destruction
>>of assets that could otherwise be used to pay off creditors.
>
>It would be legal for someone to buy them and put them in the public
>domain.  The creditors might be happy to take a few cents on the dollar.
>There was talk of any or all of MIT, Franz, Harlequin doing just this,
>but currently another party who is interested in the assets has them
>frozen.  (This is what I hear through the rumor mill).

I have this vague recolection that the original license that Symbolics (and
LMI and TI) had with MIT was such that any improvements (whatever that
means) to the original MIT Lisp code was to be available to be passed back
to MIT.  So maybe MIT has, or has a right to, Genera?  And if MIT has it,
maybe they could/would make it available cheaply/free?

Christopher (Chris) J. Vogt
mailto:vogt@computer.org
Omaha, NE
http://members.home.com/vogt/