commercialization of Franz

[fateman%ucbdali@Berkeley (Richard Fateman)]

Some people may have gotten the incorrect impression that 
the University of California will cease sending out 
tapes of Franz Lisp.  We intend to continue distribution
of the latest version which is the property of UCB.  This is
currently opus 38.91.  This distribution works, so far as we know,
on SUN releases (0.4, 1.0, 1.1) and Masscomp, and VAX 4.2BSD.
Such distributions will continue, and will continue to be unsupported.
Although we have made reasonable efforts to provide a useful,
portable, efficient, and complete system, we have spent too much of
our time and our sponsors' money in answering
questions about installation-dependent difficulties or 
(what USUALLY turns out to be non-existent) bugs.
I might point out that many of the questions come from commercial users.

Franz Inc. was formed to provide a mechanism for support, transportation
of Franz Lisp to new architectures, enhancements, documentation, etc.
It has the (non-exclusive) right to use, distribute, (etc) Franz Lisp,
and intends to produce enhancements that the University does not
have funding for. I expect that if enhancements of Franz Lisp at UCB 
are produced, these will next be made available on 4.3 BSD tapes. Earlier
distributions of contributed software or locally produced software
MAY occur, but cannot be promised.

I expect that there will continue to be a large number of Franz Lisp
users who are satisfied with the university distribution (on 4.2BSD)
or on the separate tapes (e.g. after opus 38.79) that UCB is sending out.
Others will want the enhanced, supported, version from Franz Inc.

The divergence of versions,
some of which has already occurred with local variants of older
systems being redistributed, seems inevitable regardless of Franz Inc.

I hope this clarifies UCB's position.