From: Peter Seibel
Subject: Comments, questions, gripes, or rants about the ALU?
Date:
Message-ID: <m2hdfoh0mc.fsf@gigamonkeys.com>
So I stuck around after the end of the ILC for the Association of Lisp
Users (ALU)[1] meeting just to see what it was like and somehow ended
up getting nominated to and then elected to the board of
directors. (Okay, so there were only eight nominees for eight
positions so the election part was pretty easy.) So I guess I'm going
to be reading the ALU bylaws and brushing up on my Robert's Rules of
Order.
Since I'm new to it and thus a) am full of energy and interest and b)
have essentially no investment in the history of the ALU and the way
things have been done in the past, I'd be quite interested to hear
from folks who have, as I say in the subject, comments, questions,
gripes, or rants about the ALU. If you are a Lisp users, what do you
think the ALU should be spending it's energy and resources on? If you
are a member, why did you join? and if you are not, what might entice
you to sign up? Can you identify any benefits that you derive from the
existence of the ALU? Are there other organizations (informal or
formal) that you think are doing a good job to promote the use of
Lisp or otherwise make the world a better place for Lispers?
No guaranteees that I'll have any immediate answers to any questions
folks may pose or that anything will necessarily change in the short
term (or even the long term) as a result of your comments but I'd love
to hear whatever you have to say. Thanks.
-Peter
[1] <http://www.lisp.org/>
--
Peter Seibel * ·····@gigamonkeys.com
Gigamonkeys Consulting * http://www.gigamonkeys.com/
Practical Common Lisp * http://www.gigamonkeys.com/book/
Peter Seibel wrote:
> Since I'm new to it and thus a) am full of energy and interest and b)
> have essentially no investment in the history of the ALU and the way
> things have been done in the past, I'd be quite interested to hear
> from folks who have, as I say in the subject, comments, questions,
> gripes, or rants about the ALU. If you are a Lisp users, what do you
> think the ALU should be spending it's energy and resources on? If you
> are a member, why did you join? and if you are not, what might entice
> you to sign up? Can you identify any benefits that you derive from the
> existence of the ALU? Are there other organizations (informal or
> formal) that you think are doing a good job to promote the use of
> Lisp or otherwise make the world a better place for Lispers?
>
> No guaranteees that I'll have any immediate answers to any questions
> folks may pose or that anything will necessarily change in the short
> term (or even the long term) as a result of your comments but I'd love
> to hear whatever you have to say. Thanks.
Just keep people informed, and I'm sure they'll be grateful.
Presumably it's hard to answer your question when people don't know
what the ALU's resources are.
Another thing to know is the constraints on what the ALU is willing to
do. So for example, it's probably in my interest for my membership
money to build opensource capital; but with permanent commercial
representation on the board, such plans may be overall non-starters. So
such issues need to be clarified before I'd contribute money.
I've read through their inner board mails and minutes, and they really
don't send around interesting enough messages that need to be secret,
aside from the mundane personal-info ones. The problem is, they wish to
channel all info into official announcements, obscuring the rest; and
yet exclaim things at conventions like they intend to be at the
"center" of the Lisp world, representing Lisp users and mediating
between industry, academia and users.
I definitely like the inner board members I've met so far, like Ernst,
Nick, etc.; they're good people. My views on the individuals are
separate from their role in the board, since they have to defer to the
group even in quite tiny matters.
Never a dull moment in Lisp-land. But dull can be nice.
From: Paul F. Dietz
Subject: Re: Comments, questions, gripes, or rants about the ALU?
Date:
Message-ID: <ubWdneAwq7ASDiHfRVn-ug@dls.net>
Tayssir John Gabbour wrote:
> do. So for example, it's probably in my interest for my membership
> money to build opensource capital; but with permanent commercial
> representation on the board, such plans may be overall non-starters.
I doubt the commercial lisp vendors would object to efforts
to enlarge open source lisp libraries. Heck, they'd probably
continue to contribute to those efforts.
Paul
From: Peter Seibel
Subject: Re: Comments, questions, gripes, or rants about the ALU?
Date:
Message-ID: <m2is03foxy.fsf@gigamonkeys.com>
"Tayssir John Gabbour" <···········@yahoo.com> writes:
> Peter Seibel wrote:
>> Since I'm new to it and thus a) am full of energy and interest and b)
>> have essentially no investment in the history of the ALU and the way
>> things have been done in the past, I'd be quite interested to hear
>> from folks who have, as I say in the subject, comments, questions,
>> gripes, or rants about the ALU. If you are a Lisp users, what do you
>> think the ALU should be spending it's energy and resources on? If you
>> are a member, why did you join? and if you are not, what might entice
>> you to sign up? Can you identify any benefits that you derive from the
>> existence of the ALU? Are there other organizations (informal or
>> formal) that you think are doing a good job to promote the use of
>> Lisp or otherwise make the world a better place for Lispers?
>>
>> No guaranteees that I'll have any immediate answers to any questions
>> folks may pose or that anything will necessarily change in the short
>> term (or even the long term) as a result of your comments but I'd love
>> to hear whatever you have to say. Thanks.
>
> Just keep people informed, and I'm sure they'll be grateful.
Well that, I think I can do. FWIW, in the past couple days, since I've
been elected nothing has happened that I know of. ;-)
> Presumably it's hard to answer your question when people don't know
> what the ALU's resources are.
Well, the resources are limited--as Rusty (the treasurer) explained it
at the ALU meeting tacked onto the end of the ILC, we have something
like $30-40k in the bank at the moment. But much of that will be
needed to pay for the *next* ILC (assumnig, as is quite likely, that
one of the main activities of the ALU continues to be putting on the
ILC.)
That said, I'd be interested in hearing about things folks would like
the ALU to do, somewhat without regard to current resources. (No, you
can't have a pony.) Mostly because I think that might help us to
clarify what the true goal of the ALU should be. From there we can
start thinking about ways to either better bring the resources we do
have to bear on achiving that goal or on obtaining more resources. Or
both.
> Another thing to know is the constraints on what the ALU is willing
> to do. So for example, it's probably in my interest for my
> membership money to build opensource capital; but with permanent
> commercial representation on the board, such plans may be overall
> non-starters. So such issues need to be clarified before I'd
> contribute money.
Well, I've now skimmed the by-laws and articles of incorporation, but
must admit I haven't read them carefully yet. But I don't think
there's *necessarily* any "permanent commercial representation on the
board". As far as I can tell, anyone who's a member of the ALU could
have come to the meeting the other day and nominated and then voted
for whomever they wanted to be on the board. And given the relatively
low number of folks who were actually there, if a crew of Lisp open
sourcers decided the ALU could do more if all folks with ties to Lisp
vendors were booted off the board it probably wouldn't be too
hard. And the by-laws also allow for voting by proxy, so you don't
even have to convince a bunch of people to go to a meeting--you just
have to get them to give you their proxies. (Of course, I suspect at
the moment a large percentage of the financial support of the ALU
comes from Franz so there might be consequences to kicking Duane
Rettig off the board.) It's also the case that the board operates by
majority vote and as far as I can tell only two of the eight members
of the current board represent "vendors" so it's not like the vendors
have a ton of control over the board, let alone over the membership at
large. FWIW, here are the names of the current board members:
Duane Rettig
Heow Eide-Goodman
JonL White
Kuroda Hisao
Nick Levine
Peter Lindahl
Peter Seibel
Roger Corman
I'd say if there's something that, if the ALU did it, would inspire
you to join up, you should let me/us know what it is. I can't speak
for the rest of the board, but I'm interested.
-Peter
--
Peter Seibel * ·····@gigamonkeys.com
Gigamonkeys Consulting * http://www.gigamonkeys.com/
Practical Common Lisp * http://www.gigamonkeys.com/book/
Peter Seibel wrote:
> "Tayssir John Gabbour" <···········@yahoo.com> writes:
> > Presumably it's hard to answer your question when people don't know
> > what the ALU's resources are.
>
> [snip...]
> That said, I'd be interested in hearing about things folks would like
> the ALU to do, somewhat without regard to current resources. (No, you
> can't have a pony.) Mostly because I think that might help us to
> clarify what the true goal of the ALU should be. From there we can
> start thinking about ways to either better bring the resources we do
> have to bear on achiving that goal or on obtaining more resources. Or
> both.
I once thought of the ALU as perhaps a bank of some sort, disbursing
resources/funds to people wanting to do worthwhile things that those in
the community might find valuable. Instead of the ALU just "doing
something", it would also rely on Lisp users to be near positions or
resources where they may accomplish things. If resources from the ALU
might come in handy (equipment, cash, rooms, advice), you could send
the members a request and people could comment or decide.
I find that open books and open internal ALU communication is vital, so
even when people are finished accomplishing some goal or even "fail",
something might be added to the institutional memory, and others may
thereby be in a better position to accomplish things. And it would give
a sense of what is feasible to ask for, so people could self-organize
more effectively.
So I see it as a resource, rather than an executive body.
I've also heard a brainstorming session or two about what the ALU might
do, sort of throwing mud against the wall and seeing what sticks. So
there's the ideas of certification, magazines (with regular articles
like Pascal's Wager and Lemmensodor), organizing a (recorded?) class in
a monastery for a few days on good Lisp technique where people bring
something they're working on...
> I'd say if there's something that, if the ALU did it, would inspire
> you to join up, you should let me/us know what it is. I can't speak
> for the rest of the board, but I'm interested.
I hear that the political makeup of many programmers is something like
"libertarian", whatever that means, so if the ALU is geared to
promoting independent institutions... these self-organizing things
which die when tasks are completed but might add to institutional
memory... I think people will perceive the ALU as an organization which
acts in their interests.
I'd spend money on that. Failing that, I want a pony.
Tayssir
3 things make me not join:
1: lack of transparancy
2: process fetish
3: (or maybe 2a) not enough happening
transparency:
I know a few ALU people pretty well, but I have absolutely no idea what
you guys do, other than ILC.
I heartily second the notion that more transparency would be a great
thing.
For example: does the "L" refer to Lisp-the-platonic-ideal where
code~=data (ie, pretty much all lisps with lots of parens),
Lisp-the-implementation-of-lambda-calculus (all of the above plus
dylan, haskell and ML, et cetera) or
lisp-the-term-that-got-coopted-by-common-lisp? I prefer the first, but
I cannot really tell from looking at the alu page. Looking at what I
know of the board members, I would guess that it is really all about
common lisp. It would be good to have this information front and
center.
(possible) process fetish
My (perhaps uncharitable) guess is that what we see is all there is,
and that the ALU mostly executes process stuff. If that is the case,
transparency will make it obvious, and possibly force change.
not enough done:
I believe that any language which fails to adapt is doomed. Therefore,
CLRFI is hugely important. I do not blame the CLRFI guys for not
doing much as of yet, but I do think that the ALU should force them to
either shit or get off the pot. Having an existing standards body,
even a non-functioning one, has a definite chilling effect on other
people getting another standardization movement going. This chilling
effect is far more pronounced if the chiller lives on alu's homepage.
Some things that ALU can do:
gather together tons of resources:
-provide a clearinghouse for the materials that are produced by the
various local lisp associations.
every year, LispNYC produces 12 meetings, of which at least 4-6 are
pretty heavy-duty technical affairs. There are probably dozens of
similar groups worldwide, and together we produce content at a rate
that will at least equal that of the ILC. Get all that in one spot,
and you have a great resource.
-do a google SOC-like thing for lisp only.
LispNYC is getting ready to launch Summer of Lisp, unless google
objects or we find a better name. This kind of thing is exactly what
organizations should be good at. You guys should do something like
this, or better yet, find inducements to make other people do it.
-standardize subsets of lisp that have desirable properties, like an
applicative subset, a side-effects free subset, etc.
Hi.
i dont know much about alu is supposed to operate..but i think alu
should focus on several things:
1.making lisp world integrated. for example supporting projects that
make porting libraries easier. if you have money offer grants for such
projects.
2.providing all resources at one place. handled somewhat by cliki. but
we ought to do better than that.
3.focus on one or two niches and promote lisp for them. for example web
programming or bioinformatics.focus on things which require minimal
libraries beyond those that can be written directly in common lisp. for
example gui requires that the implementation provide an interface with
x11 and win32 which is a hassle. the idea is to associate lisp with
several killer apps which can run on several different lisp
implementations.
4.win back the ai world. wake up. the ai world has moved on. i do lots
of machine learning stuff and i see people mostly using matlab and c++.
but lisp already has lots of stuff available (for example code from
paip , or texas ml group , aima code..and lots of others). integrate
them in one place , implement a good plotting library on cmucl ,
interface with lapack and blas and market them. focus on cmucl(/sbcl?)
for this for speed. in this you CAN break away from cross
implementation portability.
5. work more on 'lisp in a box'. provide tutorials and libraries in the
box. see pythons 'batteries included' approach. (if you are
thinking...'we are lispniks...we dont need to copy anything from the
python world...we are the BEST' then you are one of the several
arrogant people from lisp world and i want to have nothing with you).
who am i? i am a young(20) lisper looking to use lisp in my projects.
rahul
Peter Seibel wrote:
> So I stuck around after the end of the ILC for the Association of Lisp
> Users (ALU)[1] meeting just to see what it was like and somehow ended
> up getting nominated to and then elected to the board of
> directors. (Okay, so there were only eight nominees for eight
> positions so the election part was pretty easy.) So I guess I'm going
> to be reading the ALU bylaws and brushing up on my Robert's Rules of
> Order.
>
> Since I'm new to it and thus a) am full of energy and interest and b)
> have essentially no investment in the history of the ALU and the way
> things have been done in the past, I'd be quite interested to hear
> from folks who have, as I say in the subject, comments, questions,
> gripes, or rants about the ALU. If you are a Lisp users, what do you
> think the ALU should be spending it's energy and resources on? If you
> are a member, why did you join? and if you are not, what might entice
> you to sign up? Can you identify any benefits that you derive from the
> existence of the ALU? Are there other organizations (informal or
> formal) that you think are doing a good job to promote the use of
> Lisp or otherwise make the world a better place for Lispers?
>
> No guaranteees that I'll have any immediate answers to any questions
> folks may pose or that anything will necessarily change in the short
> term (or even the long term) as a result of your comments but I'd love
> to hear whatever you have to say. Thanks.
>
> -Peter
>
> [1] <http://www.lisp.org/>
>
> --
> Peter Seibel * ·····@gigamonkeys.com
> Gigamonkeys Consulting * http://www.gigamonkeys.com/
> Practical Common Lisp * http://www.gigamonkeys.com/book/
Peter Seibel <·····@gigamonkeys.com> writes:
> Since I'm new to it and thus a) am full of energy and interest and b)
> have essentially no investment in the history of the ALU and the way
> things have been done in the past, I'd be quite interested to hear
> from folks who have, as I say in the subject, comments, questions,
> gripes, or rants about the ALU. If you are a Lisp users, what do you
> think the ALU should be spending it's energy and resources on? If you
Frankly, after thinking about this a lot, and observing what the ALU
actually did for some time, I simply don't know how the ALU should be
spending its energies and resources on.
The only thing I can say is that organizing Lisp conferences is a good
thing. Socializing is also a good thing but, having never attended a
Lisp conference, I may have some kind of distorted view of reality at
such events:
Why not discuss Lisp at Lisp conferences?
http://www.paoloamoroso.it/log/041122.html
As for rants, I do have one. The ALU should reduce the publication
time for conference proceedings to something less than 2 years.
I still don't know whether I will ever be able to purchase the ILC
2003 proceedings (feel free to ask ALU officials and Franz employees
about my inquiries). Note that I say "purchase": I understand that it
takes time to collect and publish the material, and I am willing to
pay for this.
Paolo
--
Why Lisp? http://lisp.tech.coop/RtL%20Highlight%20Film
Recommended Common Lisp libraries/tools:
- ASDF/ASDF-INSTALL: system building/installation
- CL-PPCRE: regular expressions
- UFFI: Foreign Function Interface
From: Paul F. Dietz
Subject: Re: Comments, questions, gripes, or rants about the ALU?
Date:
Message-ID: <wsednXz8jqn1WiDfRVn-gQ@dls.net>
Paolo Amoroso wrote:
> I still don't know whether I will ever be able to purchase the ILC
> 2003 proceedings (feel free to ask ALU officials and Franz employees
> about my inquiries). Note that I say "purchase": I understand that it
> takes time to collect and publish the material, and I am willing to
> pay for this.
A CD containing the ILC 2003 proceedings was for sale at ILC 2005
(and was being distributed free of charge to those who had
attended ILC 2003).
Paul
"Paul F. Dietz" <·····@dls.net> writes:
> A CD containing the ILC 2003 proceedings was for sale at ILC 2005
> (and was being distributed free of charge to those who had
> attended ILC 2003).
When I contacted the ALU, I was told about an ILC 2003 Proceedings CD.
But it was not clear to me whether the CD was a limited edition for
ILC 2003 attendees only, or whether a few spare copies would have been
made available for sale elsewhere.
This is probably what happened at ILC 2005, but I got no official
notification about this from ALU. And I *still* don't know whether
there are any ILC 2003 proceeding CDs left for those who expressed
interest in this since 12 Jun 2004, like in my case.
Paolo
--
Why Lisp? http://lisp.tech.coop/RtL%20Highlight%20Film
Recommended Common Lisp libraries/tools:
- ASDF/ASDF-INSTALL: system building/installation
- CL-PPCRE: regular expressions
- UFFI: Foreign Function Interface
From: Edi Weitz
Subject: Re: Comments, questions, gripes, or rants about the ALU?
Date:
Message-ID: <u7jgiw204.fsf@agharta.de>
On Sat, 25 Jun 2005 16:06:48 -0500, "Paul F. Dietz" <·····@dls.net> wrote:
> Paolo Amoroso wrote:
>
>> I still don't know whether I will ever be able to purchase the ILC
>> 2003 proceedings (feel free to ask ALU officials and Franz
>> employees about my inquiries). Note that I say "purchase": I
>> understand that it takes time to collect and publish the material,
>> and I am willing to pay for this.
>
> A CD containing the ILC 2003 proceedings was for sale at ILC 2005
> (and was being distributed free of charge to those who had attended
> ILC 2003).
But Paolo specifically said that he never attended a Lisp conference,
and I'm pretty sure there are a /lot/ of people who haven't been at
one of the ILCs (not everybody lives in the US) but would like to have
the proceedings.
My experience has been like this:
1. For the ILC 2002 proceedings I sent a big pile of money to Franz to
get two of the four (?) CDs and the book. I forgot the exact
amount but it was significantly more than a student or, say,
someone from Eastern Europe would probably like to pay. (No, I
don't think Franz was ripping me off. I think it was just a matter
of bad organization.)
2. For the ILC 2003 proceedings I got an email two weeks ago telling
me I could pick up my CD at Stanford or have it snail-mailed to me.
I guess this email was sent to all 2003 participants and I only got
it by mistake. I replied I'd like to get the CDs although I wasn't
there and I'd be willing to pay for it. No reply yet.
And let's not forget that this conference was /two years/ ago!
I really wonder what's so hard about this. My understanding is that
nobody who gives a talk at such a conference wants to make money off
of the proceedings so why not just put all the stuff on a server and
let people download it? It's really that easy...
<http://weitz.de/eclm2005/>
Cheers,
Edi.
--
Lisp is not dead, it just smells funny.
Real email: (replace (subseq ·········@agharta.de" 5) "edi")
> 2. For the ILC 2003 proceedings I got an email two weeks ago telling
> me I could pick up my CD at Stanford or have it snail-mailed to me.
> I guess this email was sent to all 2003 participants and I only got
> it by mistake. I replied I'd like to get the CDs although I wasn't
> there and I'd be willing to pay for it. No reply yet.
I spoke at ILC 2003 (and attended for 2 of the days); however, I wasn't
at ILC 2005 and I did not receive any email regarding obtaining a copy
of the proceedings. I would like to get a copy of the proceedings -
were you contacted by the ALU or by Franz (or someone else)?
Cheers,
Bill
From: Edi Weitz
Subject: Re: Comments, questions, gripes, or rants about the ALU?
Date:
Message-ID: <u7jghsk5s.fsf@agharta.de>
On 25 Jun 2005 20:15:01 -0700, ········@gmail.com wrote:
> I spoke at ILC 2003 (and attended for 2 of the days); however, I
> wasn't at ILC 2005 and I did not receive any email regarding
> obtaining a copy of the proceedings. I would like to get a copy of
> the proceedings - were you contacted by the ALU or by Franz (or
> someone else)?
I got an email from the ALU and this email was also forwarded to the
ALU announce mailing list by Nick Levine IIRC.
--
Lisp is not dead, it just smells funny.
Real email: (replace (subseq ·········@agharta.de" 5) "edi")
Paolo Amoroso <·······@mclink.it> wrote:
+---------------
| As for rants, I do have one. The ALU should reduce the publication
| time for conference proceedings to something less than 2 years.
+---------------
Then you should be pleased to know that bound paper copies of
the ILC 2005 Proceedings were handed out to attendees along with
their badges as they checked in! ...thanks to Carl Shapiro, and
to all the authors who actually submitted their papers on time!!
I heard some noise about a CD being produced later, to include
the papers in the paper version plus those submitted after the
printing deadline, but I'm not sure when or what the availability
is supposed to be.
-Rob
-----
Rob Warnock <····@rpw3.org>
627 26th Avenue <URL:http://rpw3.org/>
San Mateo, CA 94403 (650)572-2607