Re: The Lispm MAY or MAY NOT adopt various aspects of Common Lisp.

[Guy.Steele at CMU-10A]

Your points are well taken, RMS.  My understanding (Moon or DLW or someone
can clarify) was that LISPM (more specifically, Symbolics) was considering
to promise merely to *support* Common LISP, not necessarily to convert to
it wholesale.  On the other hand, if Common LISP is satisfactory, I would
think there would be little reason to continue to support two closely
parallel dialects.

I don't want to interfere with the politics of the suppliers and users
of Lisp Machine LISP at this point, but I would like to explain why
comments on Common LISP are not being solicited from a wider community
*at this point*.  The design is in such an early state that there are
many rough edges, inconsistencies, and just plain bad design choices
(mostly on my part), plus "flags put up to see who salutes" as Moon
said.  I fully expect that any competent LISP hacker will find plenty of
things to object to.  It would be a waste of my time, however, *at this
stage*, to have to wade through fifty sets of comments objecting
largely to the same things.  Fifty sets of "there's a typo on page 57"
also are no more useful than a single such comment.

Therefore on this iteration I have communicated mostly with just one or
two representatives of each of a few groups (VAX/NIL, S-1/NIL, Spice
LISP, and LISPM) which have shown interest in fostering and supporting
Common LISP.  It has always been my assumption that these
representatives would consult others in their respective communities if
necessary and as they saw fit.  On the next iteration I hope to solicit
comments from a wider community.

--Guy