Re: [SQUIRES: Franz]

[Stephen Squires <SQUIRES@IPTO.ARPA>]

Your interpretation of my message is essentially along the same lines
as my response to his claims. He seemed unwilling (or unable) to back
the claims up with evidence to support them. In fact, there appears
to be specific examples that some of the claims are over stated or
stated out of context. The model that he used had to do with Lucid
representatives which he sees as his main competitor and which
he counts both Gabriel and Falhman as representing.

The idea of having a list of "recognized Common Lisp" implementations
from various companies with a technical point of contact identified
may be an effective way to accomplish some related objectives.
Among these are (1) recognition to companies and key people that
are contributing to the Common Lisp transtion process λ, (2)
publication of the progress that has been made toward achieving
acceptance of Common Lisp, and (3) some indication of things planned
in the future. This might take the form of a Common Lisp newsletter
(electronic and paper) with the first issue dealing with some of the
background, reporting on the Boston meeting, reporting on the
committees, providing the list of companies and people, and
discussing futures. One point to make about the list of implementations
is that these are not yet validated but based on some reasonable
criteria (perhaps a statement from the company that they believe
that they are reasonably close, and intend to support the standard)
and that they will participate in the validation process and bring
their product into conformance and aggree to the Common Lisp 
name policy.

I view the discussion that has occured on the net as reasonable and
constructive attempt to deal with the issues raised. I also believe
that the ad hoc committee agreed to by the Community at the Boston
meeting has gone through a careful process to establish the committees
required to do an effective job at getting on with the real business
of dealing with language revisions for the next release of the
reference manual and to support the related standards activities.


I believe that Steele has collected much of the information about
various implementations. A more formal version of this process
could be started by the Steering Committee through a letter
(perhaps on "official Common Lisp letterhead) that asks for
the needed information to be provided in an "official" way
by the company with a designation of their technical point
of contact(s?). This would provide both recognition that
some of these companies want, and provide the Common Lisp
Organization a well defined point of contact into the
industry base.

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