[HN Gopher] Owner of Symbolics Lisp machines IP is interested in...
___________________________________________________________________
Owner of Symbolics Lisp machines IP is interested in a non-
commercial release
Author : mepian
Score : 216 points
Date : 2023-07-07 17:39 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (hachyderm.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (hachyderm.io)
| johndmcmaster wrote:
| Some friends and I tried to buy chips from them recently.
| However, they wanted a relatively significant amount of money for
| them that more accurately reflected commercial rates than
| historical collectible prices. Seems like they are operating as a
| corporation still and may still be protective over their IP
|
| Background: I maintain the largest die photography collection on
| the internet. I wanted to take some die pictures for historical
| reasons. Fortunately I was able to get one to image from a third
| party, although I haven't posted it yet
| lispm wrote:
| I would think that in the few remaining CPUs specially designed
| to run Lisp have a significant historical value. Just having a
| working original Lisp Machine is extremely rare these days -
| given that there were probably only 10000 ever being made and
| the older ones (from the early to mid 80s) are extremely
| fragile.
| linguae wrote:
| This would be a major development should this come to pass. Even
| if Genera doesn't get released under a OSS-compliant license,
| this will be beneficial for hobbyists and historians (though I
| don't know how restrictive non-commercial licenses are for people
| in academia), similar to the recent release of the Apple Lisa
| source code (which has similar stipulations). I've always wanted
| to use Symbolics Genera, but I was born around the time of the AI
| winter of the late 1980s.
|
| I wonder if there were any efforts in the 1990s or 2000s to
| create a FOSS clone of Genera in the vein of either the GNU
| project, the Linux kernel, and 4.4BSD and its descendants. I
| heard that Genera is quite complex, but complexity didn't stop
| ReactOS and Haiku from chugging along after all these years.
| zokier wrote:
| > I wonder if there were any efforts in the 1990s or 2000s to
| create a FOSS clone of Genera in the vein of either the GNU
| project
|
| Of course GNU project originally was heavily influenced by LISP
| machines, its only later that the lispy aspirations largely
| died off. Example from the original announcement:
|
| > In particular, we plan to have [...] Lisp-based window system
| through which several Lisp programs and ordinary Unix programs
| can share a screen. Both C and Lisp will be available as system
| programming languages
|
| As I understand the idea was to build free Lisp Machine clone
| which would have bits of unix in it.
| pjmlp wrote:
| While nowadays they are a bit more open to which languages to
| use on GNU projects,
|
| https://www.gnu.org/prep/standards/standards.html#Source-
| Lan...
|
| Back in the day it was mostly about C, hence why C adoption
| grew again as GNU/Linux gained adoption, when it was already
| being taken over by C++ in the Apple and Microsoft/IBM
| ecosystems.
|
| > Using a language other than C is like using a non-standard
| feature: it will cause trouble for users. Even if GCC
| supports the other language, users may find it inconvenient
| to have to install the compiler for that other language in
| order to build your program. So please write in C.
|
| -- http://web.mit.edu/gnu/doc/html/standards_7.html
|
| Lisp was only considered as part of specific applications
| like Emacs, as you can read on that surviving version from
| 1994.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| For a while there Guile (Scheme not Lisp, but similar vibe)
| was being pushed as the preferred glue and extension and
| scripting language for the GNU ecosystem, but this didn't
| really go anywhere. Nor did the elisp->euile transition in
| GNU emacs ever happen.
| kagevf wrote:
| > but this didn't really go anywhere.
|
| What about guix? It uses guile ...
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| You'd hope that that these folks could at least do a GPL-
| style/copyleft license, which would effectively prevent (non-
| negotiated) commercial use anyways, while still enabling the
| open source community to enhance and distribute?
| sigstoat wrote:
| i can take something like Octave (very GPL) and do commercial
| things with it all day. the GPL would only be relevant if i
| start distributing Octave itself. (or, in your suggested
| world, if i started distributing the hypothetically GPL'd
| genera)
| racingmars wrote:
| The GPL does not prohibit commercial use at all.
|
| Often when historical stuff like this is released for "non-
| commercial use", they're not just talking about not using the
| code itself in your own non-open-source product, but they
| mean "you can't run your business on this software."
|
| The GPL certainly doesn't stop a commercial entity from
| downloading and using a GPL-licensed accounting package such
| a GnuCash to keep track of their company finances.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| I mean I guess I should have explicitly said "derived
| distribution for commercial projects" but I kinda thought
| that was obvious since nobody is going to use Genera as is,
| it would require substantial upgrading to make it useful
| for the 21st century.
|
| Which would be a derived work under GPL and require
| publication of sources if distributed etc. etc.
|
| GPL makes a lot of sense to me for something like this.
| Nobody is going to make money off Symbolic's old IP, but if
| they somehow were, clauses in the GPL3 or some variant of a
| copyleft license would likely force them to contribute
| back.
| jasonjayr wrote:
| Having never used a lisp machine, and only having a basic
| understanding of it -- but if the whole system is a lisp
| image + apps are just calling into the OS as if they were
| lisp functions, woulden't a 'pure GPL' be problematic
| becuase _EVERYTHING_ running in it would have to be GPL?
| Are there clear linking boundaries in symbolics lisp
| between apps + the OS ?
| convolvatron wrote:
| kinda. not really. but I think this is an important point
| about the gpl. it hinges on this notion of 'linkage'
| which is a specific technical implementation which is
| partially on its way out.
|
| but I don't see why it would be a concern here? you're
| saying to develop a non-gel application on top a gpl-d
| genera? I guess so.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| GPL3 kinda cleans this up a bit, doesn't it?
| kazinator wrote:
| Lisps have linkage via symbols. Loading a shared library
| on Unix via dlopen() is just a frankenstein version of
| loading a compiled Lisp file.
|
| Linkage is a very abstract concept; it just means name
| references in this piece here connect with name
| definitions in that piece over there. The tech may
| change, but the concept won't easily go away.
|
| Function bindings being established or replaced, and used
| by code in other files, is linkage.
|
| If you load a proprietary compiled file (.fasl or
| whatever) into a GPLed Lisp program/image such that
| either uses symbols in the other, that is a GPL
| violation.
|
| However, a given Lisp can spell out exceptions to the
| rule. Like that a proprietary module may be used,
| provided it only uses certain symbols (in the module ->
| program direction), and certain registration mechanisms
| for its code being hooked in (program -> module
| direction). If it uses GPL symbols then it must be GPLed.
| Likewise, if the program is hacked to bypass the GPL-free
| module registration mechanism, so that it calls some
| proprietary symbols directly, that is also a GPL
| violation.
|
| Same as Linux kernel .ko modules, basically. If you hack
| the kernel to call some function in a proprietary .ko,
| then that's a tainting situation. A .ko calling non-GPL
| functions, likewise. A proprietary .ko's module_init
| function being called by the kernel is not a GPL
| violation, and that module_init calling a non-GPL symbol
| to register something is also okay.
| gumby wrote:
| > it hinges on this notion of 'linkage' which is a
| specific technical implementation which is partially on
| its way out.
|
| The GPL does not care about linkage status. The GNU
| Library license, which I originally wrote, is for cases
| such as this, and the lispm code could be licensed that
| way.
|
| I don't understand what you mean by "partially on its way
| out".
| amno wrote:
| As long as you don't distribute it, you are OK.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| For GPLv2
| pxc wrote:
| And also GPLv3. It's only AGPL that has stipulations for
| software you don't distribute t ok others.
| kazinator wrote:
| The Linux kernel shows that you can have GPL symbols and
| non-GPL symbols.
|
| Perhaps more relevantly, here is an example of a GPL-ed
| Lisp implementation which has special provisions that
| allow proprietary programs to be redistributed which use
| it:
|
| https://clisp.sourceforge.io/impnotes/faq.html#faq-
| licensing
|
| One notable rule is that applications that access symbols
| non-portable internal packages (considered to be CLISP
| extensions) must comply with the GPL.
|
| FFI is one of those packages. So this probably means that
| a proprietary application that extends CLISP via FFI
| (e.g. to call its own proprietary library) must split off
| that piece away from the application and make it GPL. I'm
| guessing that the rest of the code, which depends on the
| CLISP+extension, doesn't have to be GPL.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| GPL treats isolated processes and shared libs as a
| license firewall. That doesn't happen in Lisp world.
| kazinator wrote:
| If a GPLed shared library is loaded into a process,
| everything in it has to be compatibly licensed.
|
| GPL-incompatible applications that dynamically load a
| GPLed library and use it optionally can probably get away
| with it.
|
| If you make a proprietary program which can optionally
| use a GPLed dynamic library, which you don't ship with
| the program, you're _likely_ untouchable in court, if
| your attorney argues the point with a tongue more silver
| than the other guys ' attorney.
| em-bee wrote:
| a different definition could be applied here, which would
| be fine because it would not be an additional restriction
| but less restriction than what the GPL would demand.
|
| on the other hand, not having this boundary would mean
| that a lot of commercial use would be prevented, which
| would work in favor of those who originally were looking
| for a non-commercial license.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| It doesn't. You can trip the GPL on anything that makes
| your code and the GPL-covered code form the same
| "program." What that term means exactly is strategically
| ambiguous; but it definitely does NOT mean "same address
| space."
|
| Shared libraries are very much NOT a firewall either,
| Stallman explicitly said otherwise[0] and Lesser GPL is
| there specifically for people who want it the other way
| round.
|
| Linux is special - it's licensed with an exception that
| says user space never trips the GPL. Linus has also
| further interpreted said exception to mean that code that
| only touches user space equivalent APIs can live in
| kernel space without tripping GPL. They even have DRM[1]
| that enforces this interpretation on LKMs.
|
| Absent that exception, who knows. The GPL copyleft is
| deliberately written to be as strong as copyright laws
| are, and we live in a legal environment where APIs can by
| copyrighted. So it's entirely plausible to argue that a
| GPL operating system trips its copyleft on all software
| written for it. A less hypothetical example: packaged
| emulators. If you sell a proprietary game wrapped inside
| a GPL emulator, that's a single program now, and you're
| violating GPL. However, while several emulator developers
| have had their work used in exactly this way, none of
| them have been willing to demand a relicense of the game
| their emulator was packaged with.
|
| [0] https://sourceforge.net/p/clisp/clisp/ci/default/tree
| /doc/Wh...
|
| [1] Digital Rights Management. Yes, Linus could actually
| sue a driver vendor that circumvented the Linux kernel
| linker licensing rules under DMCA 1201. GPLv3 explicitly
| contravenes such interpretations of the code, but well,
| Linus ain't touching that license with a ten foot pole.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| The emulator example is not a great one, it could be
| argued is an aggregation, not derivative.
| whartung wrote:
| I bet there is a valid argument that there's nothing here of
| any commercial value anymore.
|
| The industry has gone beyond "catching up" to surpassing the
| values of the Lisp Machine and Genera. Any grand ideas of
| this era have been considered, and either mined,
| reimplemented, and exploited or simply rejected as being past
| their time.
|
| The lack of a Lisp machine or environment like Genera is not
| holding Lisp (much less the entire modern family of Lisp-y
| languages) back. And modern IDEs are off the charts, even if
| they don't check every single box of what Genera has to
| offer.
|
| As an industry, we've not just stood on the shoulders of
| giants of the past like Genera, we've stepped off and up and
| moved ahead.
|
| I've seen the Genera image that's floating around, it ran in
| a VM of some kind. There's a couple YouTube videos of
| demonstrations, and maybe I've seen the wrong ones, but I've
| just seen them as interesting but not necessarily compelling.
| It would be wonderful to see a thorough review from a modern
| perspective.
|
| And, yea, they should set the system free. It's pushing 50
| years old, and we're in "internet" time, so who knows how
| much that is in "No one knows you're a dog" years.
| dietrichepp wrote:
| Maybe not of commercial value.
|
| But I took the time to get SLIME set up, with SBCL, and it
| seems like a completely different world. I've used
| languages with dynamic loading and REPLs before, and it
| seems like we still have something to learn from Lisp.
| Like, the experience is far from ideal--Lisp has its own
| problems. But it is just so damn nice to redefine a
| function in a running system, without having to then get
| the system back into the state that I need. I've used IDEs
| with dynamic code patching, and I've used Python systems
| that reload modules, but there have always been problems
| with the ergonomics.
| NavinF wrote:
| Never understood this sentiment. I was editing functions
| without restarting the whole program using visual studio
| >15 years go and the ergonomics were great: I just click
| the line number next to the function, edit what I need to
| edit, and click continue to use the new function.
|
| https://learn.microsoft.com/en-
| us/visualstudio/debugger/edit...
| dietrichepp wrote:
| I've used that before, but the Lisp stuff still feels a
| lot better. I'm not just running a program and swapping
| out a function, but I'm using a REPL, some powerful
| introspection capabilities, a compiler, and a running
| system all together in a way that just works really
| nicely. I can add new files, import new libraries, and
| redefine structures. Objects that I print out in the REPL
| can be copied out and pasted directly into code. Rather
| than running the program and fixing the problems, you
| keep the system running the entire time you're working on
| it. And the condition system provides a lot of help when
| you screw something up.
|
| To be clear--I'm not making the argument that people
| should be writing programs in Lisp. Just that there are
| some things to learn from the way Lisp development works.
|
| In the past, when I've used the various edit-and-continue
| tools, it felt it was just cutting some time out of the
| edit-compile-run cycle. The Lisp system feels more like a
| workbench, where you create fixtures to try things out
| while you are building the system.
| riffraff wrote:
| Have you tried a smalltalk environment?
|
| There's plenty of mature options both commercial and
| free, and to me, many years ago,they have a similar
| feeling.
| kazinator wrote:
| Program Edit and Continue is a fragile self modifying C
| code hack that you would never dare try in production on
| a customer machine.
|
| It doesn't simply replace a function binding; it actually
| replaces code and puts the instruction pointer of
| existing threads that were running that code into some
| similar location in the new code. (Which is pretty
| amazing, to be sure).
|
| What's going on in Lisp code reloading is something a lot
| pedestrian; just new functions are replacing old ones.
| Thread which are in the middle of running the old
| functions continue with those ones. When the last thread
| is done executing a function, it can be garbage
| collected.
| Thiez wrote:
| Editing code live in production should not be part of
| your workflow, so kind of a pointless feature.
|
| I don't work with life-critical software and yet auditors
| demand that every code-change to production is peer
| reviewed and linked to a jira item.
| dietrichepp wrote:
| To be clear, I'm not describing "editing live in
| production" as the workflow. The workflow is editing code
| live on your development machine, committing the changes,
| and going through the normal code review + CI/CD pipeline
| you'd set up for any other project.
|
| Something like Fix & Continue in Visual Studio is good
| for testing out smaller changes. By comparison, something
| like SLIME + Lisp is powerful enough to use for
| developing new features. The running system on your
| developer workstation is mostly synchronized with the
| source code on disk because the interface you use for
| making changes is the editor. This synchronization is not
| perfect, but that's why you have your unit tests and
| CI/CD pipeline.
| kazinator wrote:
| Ticketed and peer-reviewed fixes can be deployed live in
| production as if they were live code edits. Technically
| it is the same thing; it's just a process difference.
| NavinF wrote:
| > puts the instruction pointer of existing threads that
| were running that code into some similar location in the
| new code
|
| If you're implying that this isn't thread safe, you're
| wrong. Edit and continue works just like how you
| described Lisp code reloading. Works just fine in
| production if you're crazy enough to push a debug build.
|
| I dunno why Lisp people keep advertising ancient and
| widely distributed tech as revolutionary. Eg have you
| looked at LLVM XRay? It's yet another "self modifying C
| code hack", except it's explicitly designed to work in
| production on release builds:
| https://llvm.org/docs/XRay.html
| pjmlp wrote:
| It used to be like that, however the new hot code reload
| uses an improved approach, althought it still isn't
| Lisp/Smalltalk.
| kazinator wrote:
| > _stood on the shoulders of giants of the past like
| Genera_
|
| I don't buy it. What in the world actually traces its roots
| to Genera in any way, outside of the Lisp microcosm?
| rjsw wrote:
| Not Genera, but there is a thread of TI Explorer -> .NET.
|
| Maybe PowerShell can also be described as using some of
| the same concepts of manipulating data as the Genera UI.
| lispm wrote:
| What happened was that a lot of Lisp/AI companies had to
| let people go. Amongst them from the Lisp Machine
| companies: LMI, Symbolics, TI, Xerox, ... but also Lucid
| and a few Expert System vendors. Some of these people
| were very experienced developers. There were only a few
| Lisp/Lisp-like companies/projects to go: Apple/Dylan,
| Harlequin, Franz, Clozure, ITA, ... They also worked on
| Java and .net infrastructure and languages.
|
| Dan Weinreb wrote an object-oriented database at
| Symbolics -> Objectstore was founded by former Symbolics
| people. Their C++ database was said to be influenced by
| Symbolics Statice.
|
| Patrick Dussud from TI went to Microsoft. Dave Moon went
| to Apple. Gary Palter worked for Clozure. Steele worked
| for SUN on language design (Java, Fortress, ...). Weinreb
| later went to ITA -> worked on the flight search engine
| written in Lisp. There are a bunch of other examples.
|
| A bunch of language infrastructure or even language
| designs was influenced.
| the-smug-one wrote:
| Generally Java and the JVM. The source code for J9 and
| Hotspot VM are taken from Smalltalk, which of course had
| a lot of mixing with Lisp. If you look at Mark Reinhold
| and John Rose (architects for the OpenJDK project), then
| you'll also see that they're Lispers.
|
| I don't think the roots are going to be source code-
| based, but based on cultural transfer.
| kazinator wrote:
| The question isn't about Lisp influence, though.
|
| But the idea of Java being Lisp influenced is
| questionable. Though they had Guy Steele, who said
| something about bringing C programmers halfway to Lisp,
| pretty much the the only Lisp idea in Java is garbage
| collection.
|
| The JVM is hostile against the efficient implementation
| of Lisp-like languages; it doesn't let you pack tag
| fields into pointer values.
| the-smug-one wrote:
| Is it that big of a step to assume that old school
| Lispers know about Genera and have been influenced by it?
|
| >But the idea of Java being Lisp influenced is
| questionable. Though they had Guy Steele, who said
| something about bringing C programmers halfway to Lisp,
| pretty much the the only Lisp idea in Java is garbage
| collection.
|
| Java also has some dynamicism through classloaders and
| reflection.
|
| >The JVM is hostile against the efficient implementation
| of Lisp-like languages; it doesn't let you pack tag
| fields into pointer values.
|
| It's a good trade off for Java, pointer coloring is used
| by ZGC for example.
| richardjdare wrote:
| When I got that leaked Genera image going in Linux I felt
| like I'd found a crashed UFO. It was incredibly inspiring
| and I don't think its true at all that we have surpassed
| it.
|
| Why do I still have a clunky character-mode terminal
| instead of a Listener that can display rich text, images,
| mousable forms? Just think what we'd have today if we'd
| worked on that paradigm for 30 years instead of fetishizing
| the limitations of 70s minicomputers.
|
| Why is it that when I type a command into said terminal and
| forget a parameter, I have to delete it, or open another
| window to type 'man', whereas on Genera I can hit <help>
| and view (rich, hypertext) documentation for a specific
| parameter, inline, while still typing in the command? That
| little feature was a revelation.
|
| Genera's fluid, ergonomic developer experience is something
| we are turning away from more and more these days.
| Programming is increasingly surrounded by the most tedious
| bureaucratic and administrative work. The hoops I have to
| jump through before I can start creating something in a
| programming language are only increasing. If people had
| paid attention to Genera and to Lisp machines it wouldn't
| be like this.
|
| And I've only mentioned surface aspects of the user
| experience. I haven't talked about being able to debug
| _anything_ , or the idea that what look like applications
| are actually "substrates" that I can potentially use as
| APIs for my own work. We haven't scratched the surface yet.
| Paul-Craft wrote:
| > I wonder if there were any efforts in the 1990s or 2000s to
| create a FOSS clone of Genera in the vein of either the GNU
| project, the Linux kernel, and 4.4BSD and its descendants.
|
| Not that I know of, but here's an install guide for the real
| deal: https://archives.loomcom.com/genera/genera-install.html
| bilegeek wrote:
| Also, the predecessor MIT CADR LispM has had an emulator and
| OS for awhile.
|
| https://tumbleweed.nu/r/bug-lispm/forumpost/7475d8a3db
| rjsw wrote:
| There is also an emulator for the LMI Lisp Machine [1].
|
| [1] https://github.com/dseagrav/ld
| mindcrime wrote:
| See also: http://www.unlambda.com/index.php?n=Main.Mit
| pjmlp wrote:
| While not Genera, Interlisp-D at Xerox was their approach to
| Lisp Machines, and is available now.
|
| https://interlisp.org/
|
| https://www.softwarepreservation.org/projects/LISP/interlisp...
|
| "Xerox PARC:Interlisp D Programmers Tools"
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgMZ9gRhq8A
|
| "The Medley Interlisp Project: Status and Plans"
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6-b_hazcyk
| skissane wrote:
| What advantages does Genera have over Interlisp-D?
| dumdumchan wrote:
| Just a virtual machine that runs a lisp os. Might as well just
| run clojure on jvm
| linguae wrote:
| What makes Symbolics Genera interesting is not the fact it's a
| Common Lisp implementation; there's SBCL, ABCL, and plenty of
| others. It's the development environment inside Genera that
| many users fondly remember and make it stand out even today.
| The excitement about the broader availability of Genera centers
| around its development environment.
| shrubble wrote:
| Even the device drivers were written in Lisp.
| pdw wrote:
| Don't hold your breath, these rumors have been going for well
| over a decade:
|
| 2018: "The current owner of Symbolics displayed interest in open-
| sourcing Genera a few years ago but nothing happened since then."
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17824330
|
| 2014: "The problem is that the Symbolics IP is now owned by John
| Mallery; he has stated he has plans for making it available but
| so far (several years) has not yet done so."
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7882034
|
| The software itself can easily be found these days, if you're
| interested for hobbyist reasons.
| andsoitis wrote:
| > The software itself can easily be found these days
|
| where?
| charcircuit wrote:
| archive.org
| ndiddy wrote:
| Good article on getting things set up:
| https://archives.loomcom.com/genera/genera-install.html
| ynniv wrote:
| An old, messy automation: https://github.com/ynniv/vagrant-
| opengenera
| mepian wrote:
| This is more than a rumor: Gary Palter is one of the last
| employees of Symbolics who wrote the emulator in the first
| place, and he communicated with the owner.
|
| He co-authored this article about the development of the
| emulator: http://pt.withy.org/publications/VLM.html
|
| The fact that he still has hope is significant.
| appleflaxen wrote:
| Is he the copyright holder? Being the last employee doesn't
| have anything to do with copyright, if you're an employee of
| a company.
| skissane wrote:
| The company (Symbolics) was owned by Andrew Topping.
| Topping died, and Symbolics' IP was sold at his deceased
| estate auction. It was bought by John C. Mallery, a
| (former?) MIT professor, so he is the current copyright
| holder. (Or at least he asserts he is-some have expressed
| doubts over the legitimacy of the transaction, but the only
| way to get a definitive answer to that would be through a
| lawsuit, and nobody thus far has wanted to go down that
| path-the risks are that one might spend a fortune on
| lawyers and Mallery could win.)
|
| Gary Palter was one of the last employees, and as such
| doesn't own the copyrights. However, he is in personal
| contact with Mallery, and the enhancements he has made to
| Genera (such as porting it to ARM) have been done with
| Mallery's permission.
|
| Nobody seems to understand why Mallery is squatting on this
| rather than making it publicly available. Palter has never
| clearly explained it, although I imagine he doesn't want to
| burn his bridges with Mallery, and that may limit what he's
| able to publicly say.
| BaculumMeumEst wrote:
| The answer is obviously "money". An MIT researcher's
| legacy will be that he withheld a huge piece of computing
| history from the world for personal gain. What a stain.
| marcus0x62 wrote:
| What money? In what alternate universe is a well-heeled
| investor or commercial entity going to pay a bunch of
| money for an ancient single-user operating system written
| in and for a language that, let's be honest, almost
| nobody uses?
| BaculumMeumEst wrote:
| Why would there be a stipulation for non-commercial use
| if this isn't about money?
| marcus0x62 wrote:
| Maybe the owner thinks Genera will become more valuable
| in the future? My point is I don't see any possibility of
| that actually happening. I'd imagine there is some
| revenue for maintenance/bug fixes of existing
| installations (David Schmidt has apparently been running
| the hardware maintenance/support side of things for quite
| some time,) but I don't see how the software does
| anything other than get less valuable commercially with
| every passing year.
| BaculumMeumEst wrote:
| > I don't see how the software does anything other than
| get less valuable commercially with every passing year
|
| That's the worst part of all this. It's not like he's
| sitting on a goldmine, he's hoarding something of immense
| historical value because it's slightly more beneficial
| for him to do so than it would be to share it.
|
| I can't imagine steering your legacy from being
| immortalized as an MIT AI researcher to... that.
| Zigurd wrote:
| There is enough money sloshing around in tech that it is
| plausible someone or some company would buy it for a lot
| more than Mallery paid for it. It was probably bought
| for, at most, a few thousand US$, on a lark. It's a
| lottery ticket.
| nullc wrote:
| > Nobody seems to understand why Mallery is squatting on
| this rather than making it publicly available.
|
| Clearly he's hoping John Titor shows up and offers to
| exchange priceless insights about the future in exchange
| for access to the code in order to repair some weird
| embedded system in the far future. :)
|
| More seriously, its not uncommon for people to have
| unrealistic expectations of the value of the things
| they've collected. They liked them enough to collect
| them, after all. People seeking them out might help
| cement the inflated valuation.
|
| The sad thing is that when people die the people that
| inherit the assets often see no value in them at all and
| lose or discard them.
| skissane wrote:
| > More seriously, its not uncommon for people to have
| unrealistic expectations of the value of the things
| they've collected.
|
| Does anyone know how much Mallery paid at the auction? It
| makes a big difference whether it was $50 or $50,000
|
| If he paid a significant sum for it, he may still be
| clinging to hopes of an eventual return on his
| investment.
| [deleted]
| znpy wrote:
| Mallery looks like somebody in their 70ies, i guess we'll
| have to wait for the next deceased estate auction?
|
| I know it's not pretty, but it's an option.
| eschaton wrote:
| Yeah, and I wouldn't give Mallery a single cent for any of it
| unless he can demonstrate that Andrew Topping actually paid the
| executors of the Symbolics bankruptcy for it; if not, it
| shouldn't have been a part of Topping's estate.
|
| I absolutely do not understand why Mallery is just sitting on
| it instead of making it available to everyone. It has zero non-
| historical value. Just put it out into the world and let it be
| examined as the historical artifact it is.
|
| (That was my plan when I learned of Topping's death.
| Unfortunately, Mallery beat me to acquiring it, and then just
| planted his ass on it.)
| rewmie wrote:
| > (That was my plan when I learned of Topping's death.
| Unfortunately, Mallery beat me to acquiring it, and then just
| planted his ass on it.)
|
| That reads as someone who sees it as a purely commercial
| investment, and is waiting for it to mature.
| marcus0x62 wrote:
| If his plan was to sit on an asset hoping it would
| appreciate, he would have been better off buying wine,
| cars, baseball cards, or even beanie babies.
| rewmie wrote:
| The potential value of an investment is in the eye of
| each investor. You believe beanie babies are a better
| investment, but Mallet might not agree with you.
| marcus0x62 wrote:
| Fortunately, the market will get to decide which one of
| us is correct. I'd place my bet on _almost anything_
| other than an obsolete operating system.
| Y_Y wrote:
| You're a mallet
| LispSporks22 wrote:
| Maybe we can save up and buy it from this dude, then open it
| something like what happened with Blender? I hate the idea of
| hobbyist licenses - it reminds me of the torturous OpenVMS
| hobbyist program or whatever the hell that incomprehensible
| situation is.
|
| Also, curious how old is the IP owner in this situation? What
| happens if he croaks with it?
| eschaton wrote:
| As with any asset, it would become part of his estate, to be
| sold to pay its debts and/or divided among his heirs or left in
| his will. It may result in another opportunity for someone to
| acquire it at probate.
| ndiddy wrote:
| AFAIK Symbolics is basically a one-man operation, and the owner
| has been unwilling to sell the rights to Genera for any price.
| Keyframe wrote:
| Does he actually have any connection to Genera or even
| Symbolics?
| mepian wrote:
| He developed a well-known web server for Genera:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CL-HTTP
| i_am_a_peasant wrote:
| i doubt he was offered >= 1 bln $. that's probably the price
| he's waiting for
| LispSporks22 wrote:
| Damn that's too bad. Part of computing history and all..
| wonder why he is motivated that way
| mepian wrote:
| Maybe he's still hoping to use it to implement his "wish":
| http://web.archive.org/web/20011107164802/www.ai.mit.edu/pe
| o...
|
| "Wish List: a knowledge-based operating system running on a
| MIMD parallel machine. The system should exceed the
| productivity of the Lisp Machine by several orders of
| magnitude and integrate seamlessly with a global knowledge
| base and with a global computational environment."
|
| Looks like he recently registered a new company:
| https://opencorporates.com/companies/us_nh/872107
| hresvelgr wrote:
| Just learned about blender's initial proprietary beginnings.
| It's interesting that they found the most success with the open
| source model.
| rwmj wrote:
| In the Blender case, the community bought the trademark and
| copyrights from the commercial owners (some VC investors if I
| remember correctly). https://www.blender.org/about/history/
| Those donors are still listed in a file in the Blender
| source: https://github.com/blender/blender/blob/main/doc/lice
| nse/bf-...
| znpy wrote:
| > https://www.blender.org/about/history/
|
| citing from the link:
|
| > On Sunday, October 13th, 2002, Blender was released under
| the terms of the GNU General Public Licence, the strictest
| possible open-source contract. Not only would Blender be
| free, but its source code would remain free, forever, to be
| used for any purpose whatsoever.
|
| keep this in mind when you pick a software license.
| rwmj wrote:
| Yes, it's a good choice, guaranteeing continuing freedom.
| ratmice wrote:
| It probably can't be understated though how important it
| was that Ton, the original author was spearheading that
| whole thing. He would have had both an existing
| relationship with the investors, and enough clout with the
| community backers to envision a future for it... trust
| which was obviously well placed.
| rbanffy wrote:
| "Non-commercial"?! How much money are they making from it now?
| behnamoh wrote:
| I just don't know why much of the Lisp ecosystem is
| closed/commercial, like if you wanna do Common lisp you have to
| pay for Lisp Works. Could it be one reason for Lisp's low
| popularity? If I want to pick up Python now, there's amazing free
| tooling for it. If I want to pick up Common lisp, well ...
| linguae wrote:
| The era when Lisp had its greatest commercial success (the
| 1980s) was a time when free (as in either beer or speech) high-
| quality development tools for any language were rare. This was
| the golden age of proprietary software; people were expected to
| pay for operating systems, compilers, editors, and other tools,
| and there was increasingly no expectation of having access to
| the source code. The GNU project was started in 1983 by Richard
| Stallman, who used to work on MIT Lisp projects (many of his
| colleagues became part of either Lisp Machines, Inc. or
| Symbolics, which all came from MIT's work on Lisp machines).
|
| Back to proprietary software, during the AI boom of the 1980s,
| Lisp machine vendors had success selling high-end workstations
| to customers willing to pay good money for Lisp environments.
| This dried up during the subsequent AI winter, though some
| customers were able to move their Common Lisp solutions to
| commercial Lisp implementations that worked on workstations or
| servers running Unix or Windows. But at this point Lisp no
| longer had the same level of commercial interest, though the
| legacy and mindshare of Lisp grew through the use of Scheme in
| CS education (e.g., SICP and the team that wrote PLT Scheme,
| which was renamed Racket) and the advocacy of Lisp from
| prominent developers and researchers like Paul Graham, Richard
| Stallman (Emacs), Eric S. Raymond, Alan Kay (while he's of
| course a Smalltalker, he's spoken fondly of LISP 1.5 and also
| of _The Art of the Metaobject Protocol_ ), and many others.
| There are also many people who used Symbolics Genera in
| particular and who speak highly of its development environment,
| sometimes expressing the sentiment that modern development
| environments don't compare to it.
|
| There are FOSS Common Lisp implementations with wide usage. The
| most notable is Steel Bank Common Lisp (SBCL), and I also hear
| of plenty of people using Armed Bear Common Lisp (ABCL, which
| runs on the Java virtual machine) and Embeddable Common Lisp
| (ECL). There are other FOSS Common Lisp implementations that I
| know less about.
| detourdog wrote:
| I will throw makerlisp in there which is a hardware lisp from
| Luther Johnson.
| behnamoh wrote:
| Thanks, this is interesting. I always like to know more about
| the history of the tech I use.
| Keyframe wrote:
| Symbolics is actually the founding reason for Stallman
| becoming full Stallman and all of the free software / GPL
| thing.
| mportela wrote:
| Then I highly recommend the book "Hackers: Heroes of the
| Computer Revolution" [1]. It describes the hacker culture
| and the hackers behind a lot of things we use to this day,
| from the early 50s to the mid 80s.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hackers:_Heroes_of_the_Co
| mpute...
| behnamoh wrote:
| Thanks, I'll check it out.
| IshKebab wrote:
| Could be part of the reason, but I think a bigger reason is
| that it's just not very pleasant to read. Syntax exists for a
| reason! Nobody really wants to hand-write an AST (or read it).
|
| Imagine programming Python by writing out the AST in JSON.
| That's what Lisp looks like.
|
| I guess it makes the parser really simple and elegant, but they
| definitely went way too far towards the programmer on the "make
| it simple for the programmer/user" spectrum.
| pasc1878 wrote:
| I find lisp much nicer to read than most languages.
|
| C/Java etc (which I was a professional in) have too many bits
| to the syntax - braces and semi-colons and the execution is
| not necessarily shown by the format.
|
| I also like python for similar reasons.
| LispSporks22 wrote:
| > if you wanna do Common lisp you have to pay for Lisp Works
|
| Nothing could be further from the truth.
| Jach wrote:
| Just use SBCL - https://www.sbcl.org/
|
| Pick an editor: https://lispcookbook.github.io/cl-
| cookbook/editor-support.ht...
|
| Good enough for games (and other commercial offerings) -
| https://kandria.com/
| clippablematt wrote:
| I've recently been enjoying using Alive with vscode(and
| copilot). Everyone suggests emacs+slime but it always felt
| like too many things to learn at once. Being able to use my
| usual ide has made it so much more pleasant. Recommend it to
| newcomers.
|
| https://github.com/nobody-famous/alive
| anthk wrote:
| >Pick and editor
|
| Well, Emacs, SBCL and SLIME are like bread and butter for
| obvious reasons.
| mepian wrote:
| It's definitely good enough for Google: https://lisp-
| journey.gitlab.io/blog/yes-google-develops-comm...
| dietrichepp wrote:
| ITA software is an acquisition, and I'm sure most of the
| Lisp development at Google is just done by engineers
| tweaking their .emacs files.
|
| The problem of parsing data from airlines is fiendishly
| hard. There are a ton of different rules for how to
| calculate prices, and all sorts of deals and promotions
| that may affect a particular route on a particular day. If
| you have a system which can parse this data, then you
| wouldn't want to rewrite it. I've read a number of articles
| about ITA Software's Lisp code and it's really interesting.
|
| Lisp may be a critical part of ITA's success, but "good
| enough for Google" is probably the wrong take here--Google,
| I'm sure, purchased a company to add its working product to
| their portfolio. I doubt that Google's processes would
| allow someone to ale a new product in Lisp.
| celaleddin wrote:
| Can you share some of the articles you mentioned about
| ITA Software's Lisp code?
| mepian wrote:
| I meant SBCL specifically, not Common Lisp in general.
| They could have been using LispWorks or Allegro CL
| instead, but they aren't.
| danielam wrote:
| Realistically, "good enough for Google" is probably largely
| an accident of acquisition. QPX, the low airfare search
| engine, is not exactly a small piece of software. In c.
| 2007, it consisted of about 1 million lines of code divided
| unevenly between Common Lisp and C++, which, by then, had
| been developed for roughly a decade for the _airline_
| industry. Rewriting it would have been a non-trivial task.
|
| Furthermore, Carl de Marcken, chief scientist/co-founder of
| ITA, had chosen Lisp because it was what he was most
| familiar with. He had told me in 2007 that if he had to
| choose a language again, he probably would have chosen
| Java, a choice Google would likely favor over Lisp.
|
| I say this not to disparage Lisp--I enjoy Lisps, and I use
| Lisp professionally--but to contextualize this particular
| use of Lisp at Google.
|
| EDIT: Just saw your reply to a sibling comment explaining
| that you meant SBCL, not Lisp per se.
| mepian wrote:
| See my other comment in this subthread.
| zaalps wrote:
| [flagged]
| User23 wrote:
| Is there still some kind of revenue stream from Symbolics Lisp or
| does the owner just want it to die with him?
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| Yeah, my thoughts precisely. Genera is obsolete. I cannot
| imagine what possible profit could be made. There may be value
| in the design that could be of benefit even today, but I cannot
| understand people who hoard old IP.
| the-smug-one wrote:
| My guess is that there are maintenance contracts which can be
| quite lucrative.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| Still? That would surprise me.
| lallysingh wrote:
| Someone's in a pickle if they need support. The older the
| contract, the more it's probably worth.
| [deleted]
| solarmist wrote:
| It's a pain to do the work associated, with no personal upside,
| so it's probably neglect more than anything.
| speed_spread wrote:
| Pain? The hardest part is probably finding a five inch floppy
| drive connected to a machine that can push to GitHub. Even
| that could be outsourced to some trusted resourceful LISP
| enthusiast.
| linguae wrote:
| There's a lot of preparatory and legal work involved in
| preparing a proprietary software project for release as an
| open source project. It's not as simple as just pushing the
| source tree to GitHub and calling it a day. For example, if
| portions of the code were licensed by other other copyright
| holders, permission from them is required. There are other
| cases where the code needs to be examined before release in
| order to edit or remove materials that are personally
| identifying, embarrassing, or could cause legal issues if
| publicly disclosed.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| Then just put up a fundraiser. There's enough nerds that
| would pitch in I'm sure it could get covered and someone
| hired to do it.
|
| Though I think it's more than likely that once people had
| free access to it and saw what modern conveniences were
| missing etc the mystique would be lost and it would be
| kept more as an archaeological asset than as an ongoing
| thing people wanted to maintain and use.
| lispm wrote:
| > mystique would be lost
|
| People would also discover that the architecture is not
| simple, but grown over a decade while there was rapid
| development of the basics people take for granted:
| standards, languages, networking, operating systems, ...
| In the mid 80s TCP/IP was an expensive add on for Genera.
| Later it was made a part of the OS. But development
| stopped before it could add things like IPv6, Unicode,
| basic security, HTTPS, and other things.
|
| One could add it, but then one had to learn ZetaLisp
| (70s/80s), Flavors (early 80s), Symbolics Common Lisp
| (80s/90s), an object-oriented networking stack
| architecture from the 80s, ...
|
| You would have a second life in a technology stack
| somewhere between the past and the future, in a parallel
| world.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| It makes more sense to me for some group to attempt to
| replicate the IDE experience in a modern Lisp (or
| similar) flavour.
|
| Still I also think these kinds of "live editing"
| environments don't translate well into some modern "best
| practices" around version control, deployment,
| versioning, etc. Remembering my experience with LambdaMOO
| & similar and then later Smalltalk/Squeak and recently
| with doing stuff with Julia's REPL, etc. They're
| fascinating and fairly productive, but I am not convinced
| about this technique's ability to scale.
| lispm wrote:
| > It makes more sense to me for some group to attempt to
| replicate the IDE experience in a modern Lisp (or
| similar) flavour.
|
| It may not have the fancy UI, may not have a fancy user
| experience, may not be an operating system, may have a
| more primitive Lisp dialect, may not have a good multi-
| threading story, ... but it might exist and people put a
| lot of work into it: GNU Emacs and its extensions.
|
| That's how it is...
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| I think half the magic I associate with the Symbolics
| products is that they also made their own hardware,
| custom built for Lisp. Which is kinda neat and magical,
| if entirely impractical.
|
| That plus the lovely keyboards, nice case design, etc.
| etc.
| lispm wrote:
| In the early days they had to - all the hardware was non-
| standard. Where would one get 36 bit memory cards? Where
| would one get CPUs which had a Lisp-specific instruction
| set? In those early days the computer (refrigerator size)
| would sit in a machine room (with enough power) and the
| user would be in his/her room with only a console (plus
| maybe a second monitor), keyboard and mouse - connected
| via a long console cable to the machine in the machine
| room. That was the experience for the programmer/user.
| The machine itself could have a lot of peripherals:
| network, tape drive, memory boards, color boards, frame
| grabber, disk drives, cpu accelerator, ... the programmer
| would see the driver code.
|
| At some point in time they produced cards for the SUN
| VMEBus and for the Mac Nubus. Then the only thing left
| was the keyboard.
|
| So, I agree, the Lisp Machine concept was a combination
| of Hard- and Software. The emulators of today only
| provide some of the software parts...
| BaculumMeumEst wrote:
| Please. Dude could day "hey I want to open source this,
| someone do the work for me and show me where to sign" and
| people would trip over themselves rushing to make it happen.
| nabla9 wrote:
| In 2021 there was port to Apple M1 MacOS, so it seems like
| there can be small revenue streams still. Open Portable Genrea
| runs on 64-bit x86 and Arm.
| lispm wrote:
| Gary Palter has made it work both on Linux and macOS, both
| x86-64 and ARM64. He also brought the original Open Genera
| for DEC Alpha to the same software level.
| gjvc wrote:
| what is there that was not supplied on the CD-ROMs and tapes they
| sold?
| effed3 wrote:
| I look at the interlisp effort, being reworked..
|
| So would be really difficult to setup a public/no-profit
| startup/company to bring up all the stuff, and coordinate all the
| people involved? maybe even a new hw can be made again..
|
| Probably the real problems arise from different opinions between
| owners and former employees about the future and possibilites of
| the technology?
|
| But this story everytime make me think at the billions of lines
| of code leaved in the dark (or in the reels of 9inch tapes),
| representing so many years/man of work, developed and debugged,
| only to be forget and sometimes reinvented, some better it's
| progress of course, and may times only worse, reinventing the
| wheel every time. Even this is a form of waste/pollution?
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-07-08 23:02 UTC)