Subject: Re: bleeding money out of clispers
From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.net>
Date: Sun, 10 Jun 2001 17:10:31 GMT
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Message-ID: <3201181827610888@naggum.net>

* Lyn A Headley
> Basically I want to offer money to help the financing, but only if
> *others* are also willing to offer some money.

  I do not understand this attitude.  If I want something, I put money into
  it.  If I do not put enough money into it to make it viable, I would very
  much prefer to know this beforehand rather than in the bankruptcy hearing.
  Therefore, I require that my money not be _spent_ before there is enough
  financing to ensure that it is not wasted.  In the absence of sufficient
  funds, I expect to get my money back.  Responsible financing takes care
  of this kind of condition very easily.  In fact, I have never _seen_ any
  endeavor where people are asked to put money into something to see if it
  might fly.  Taking people's money on a known losing bet is known as fraud.

  My advice is this: Just put up the money.  Show your own interest.  Lead
  the pack.  Require a certain amount before the project starts.  Prepare
  to lose the money nonetheless.  (I.e., do not give away money you need
  for basic necessities, regardless of the promised returns.)  Those who
  are not quite as interested or are sitting on the fence waiting for
  someone to tell them what to do, will actually follow any random leader
  who steps forward.  It is a mystifying human trait that some people will
  follow just about _any_ leader.  But exploit this pack mentality and just
  go ahead and _be_ that leader.

  Not that I think multithreading for CLISP is a good idea that _anybody_
  should be investing in, but it is their money, so feel free.  _I_ think
  it is a fantastically bad idea and would discourage people from doing it
  for the very simple reason that I expect them to make it gratuitously
  incompatible with everything else, tout their superiority by virtue of
  being different, and thus make it _harder_ to talk about multithreading
  and multiprocessing in Common Lisp.  Just like most everything else is
  "differently-abled" in CLISP, another different thing to take into
  account when discouraging people from using CLISP does not help get
  better Common Lisp environments.  Thank whatever deities might be behind
  this all that CMUCL did it mostly right.  If anything, help make CMUCL
  better and smaller and everything.  Better yet, work on _applications_ in
  Common Lisp and show that Lisp is viable as a real language, not one of
  those language that are only fun making compilers for.

#:Erik
-- 
  Travel is a meat thing.