Subject: Re: A Philosophical Diversion From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.no> Date: 1998/10/26 Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp Message-ID: <3118388598166632@naggum.no> * amoroso@mclink.it (Paolo Amoroso) | Besides NASA, who else can afford a commercial Lisp system :) a small electronic financial news distributor in Oslo just purchased its second ACL 5.0 license. so far, the cost of the licenses appears to be close to 10% of the total development costs, but that is likely to fall as more and more new ideas can _finally_ be implemented, after years of wishing without the budgets to implement them. the license may cost much up front, but when you have made this _investment_ it really starts to pay off. e.g., an idea as complex as the initial contract took me a week to add after I had spent the summer with a very bright assistant building the most elegant piece of software I have ever built, and it would have cost at least 20 times more to add it to the legacy C-based system. that was the first time we could really defend the costs of the first system, but I knew this would happen, and wishes like this will continue to come true. I think you will find similar stories all over the place. | A quick look at the Web sites of major Lisp vendors seems to suggest that | they mainly target their products to medium or large companies. Are they | also interested in selling Lisp systems to independent consultants or | programmers? ACL 5.0 Trial Edition for Linux is available for no charge for precisly this reason. Windows victims will have to pay for the Windows Personal Edition, which I think is both what they expect and deserve. (neither can be used to sell final products.) this makes it possible for the consultant or independent programmer to learn the system in and out and only ask his clients to purchase a license. this is how Franz Inc let me get up to speed on Allegro CL. it is even easier now with the Linux offering than it was when I got my personal use license. #:Erik -- The Microsoft Dating Program -- where do you want to crash tonight?