Re: Future Plans for MCL

[Al Reich <reich@austin.lockheed.com>]

Apple is making a big mistake by discontinuing support for MCL.
However, assuming that they are set in this decision, I strongly
encourage them to sell the MCL product line to a good software
developer (and don't try to get rich on the deal either).  If Apple
can't figure out what do to with a winning product, give it to some
else who can.

In my business area at Lockheed in Austin we are mostly a Unix-box
shop.  There are very few Macs or PCs around.  Most of our development
is for government customers.  We use both Lucid and Allegro CL for
prototype development.  MCL on a Mac (and especially the PPC) appeared
to be a very cost effective path to take in the future.  Recently, I
convinced one of our customers to take this path.  Fortunately, no
purchases have been made yet.  I made a mistake by trying to go with
Apple.  I'm going to be very wary of them in the future.  The PPC has
lost much (if not all) of its appeal to me.  Back to square one.

BTW, I wonder if anyone in marketing at Apple has seen the following
statistics on USENET readership.  They imply a few things for me:
  (1) C++ hasn't quite taken over the world yet.  In fact, the ratio
      of C++ readers to Lisp readers (2.5 to 1) is considerably
      smaller than what I had expected.
  (2) Within the Lisp community, the MCL news group is very large and
      active (Sadly, this will probably change for the worse now).

> From: Brad Miller  <miller@cs.rochester.edu>
> Organization: University of Rochester Computer Science Dept
> Date: Wed Feb 09 16:44:20 CST 1994
> 
> Culled from the USENET readership report for January, posted for
> informational/evangelical purposes only.
> 
>    +-- Estimated total number of people who read the group, worldwide.
>    |     +-- Actual number of readers in sampled population
>    |     |     +-- Propagation: how many sites receive this group at all
>    |     |     |      +-- Recent traffic (messages per month)
>    |     |     |      |      +-- Recent traffic (kilobytes per month)
>    |     |     |      |      |    +-- Crossposting percentage
>    |     |     |      |      |    |    +-- Cost ratio: $US/month/rdr
>    |     |     |      |      |    |    |      +-- Share: % of newsrders
>    |     |     |      |      |    |    |      |   who read this group.
>    V     V     V      V      V    V    V      V
> 190000  2265   87%  2449  4264.8  10%  0.03   4.5%  comp.lang.c
> 180000  2169   85%  2795  4872.2   9%  0.04   4.3%  comp.lang.c++
> 
>  73000   896   80%   152   967.3  37%  0.02   1.8%  comp.lang.lisp
>  44000   538   75%    23    29.1   0%  0.00   1.1%  comp.lang.lisp.x
>  42000   516   72%    13    27.7   0%  0.00   1.0%  comp.lang.lisp.franz
>  41000   501   76%   124   229.4   0%  0.01   1.0%  comp.lang.lisp.mcl
>   9300   114   24%    26    39.5   0%  0.00   0.2%  comp.org.lisp-users
>   8500   104   24%    51   142.3   4%  0.01   0.2%  comp.std.lisp

Al Reich
Lockheed - Austin Division
reich@austin.lockheed.com