On Tue, 2009-01-13 at 18:32 +0100, Lars Rune Nøstdal wrote:
> On Tue, 2009-01-13 at 18:00 +0100, Wolfgang Mederle wrote:
> > Slobodan Blazeski wrote:
> >
> > > It's not just Microsoft. Friends of mine got a Photoshop for free
> > > through some learning course for noncommercial use. After a several
> > > years when he become a good graphic designer and opened his own studio
> > > and even hired some folks to help him. What do you think he's using
> > > now GIMP? Oh no he bought licenses for him and his employeess
> > > And it's not just the big boys. One of the former companies I worked
> > > for used the noncommercial only database driver because programmers
> > > hated the preinstalled one, after few months the manager had no choice
> > > but to buy license. The other got UI widgets with something like
> > > unlimited time trial. When application was built with those widgets
> > > and it got online and they went to purchase licenses, you know what
> > > was the answer? Guys wait for few months to see if your app is making
> > > you money then you'll pay us if our widgets helped you. Now they made
> > > money licenses, and got their reference clients amd applications. Also
> > > there is a network effect of programmers leaving for other companies
> > > and spreading the word, because they're famigliar with those widgets.
> > > Another colleague of mine spread those widgets through 4 companies he
> > > worked for in the previous years and at least 2 dozen of projects.
> > > Lisp vendors aren't competing with themselves or OSS implementations
> > > they're competing with other languages. And unless the word is spread,
> > > lisp will stay IRRELEVANT.
> > > Now it seems that lisp vendors are eating the corn seed.--
> >
> > I don't get the Lisp vendors in this respect. I wrote my Magister thesis
> > in Common Lisp, and I got weird stares for my choice of language from my
> > Professor already. I wanted to make the case for CL at the institute
> > where I studied. When I asked Xanalys whether I could have a full
> > version of their implementation for writing my program with it, they
> > brushed me off suggesting to use the personal edition or wossname, which
> > was of no use because of the limited heap space -- my app was built
> > around large hash tables.
> >
> > In the end I used cmucl and stuck a TBNL-based web interface on it
> > instead of a nice GUI. It was enough for my purposes, but didn't look as
> > impressive as it could have, and installation of the system is daunting
> > to say the least*, so after my thesis was done, the project was dead for
> > the institute, no matter how good it performed.
> >
> > There was nothing to lose for Xanalys, as I could not have afforded
> > the full version of Lispworks as a student in any case, but a lot to
> > gain. That was pretty disillusioning to me. Microsoft knows that you
> > need to get them as students.
> >
> >
> > Wolfgang
> >
> > * CMUCL, Emacs, SLIME, screen, asdf, cl-ppcre, split-sequence, TBNL,
> > cl-who, Apache, mod_lisp, if I remember correctly. Not for the faint
> > of the heart.
> >
>
> Hmmm .. there is a difference between installation/distribution and
> setup and configuration of a development environment required for some
> library or application, regardless of languages/tools.
oh, and once a development environment has been configured one can
create many installation/distribution "packages" using it -- so it's a
one time operation and, yeah, it isn't something that's done by the ones
who's supposed to install and/or use your software.