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Symbolics Genera - The Best Software Environment Available

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Re: Symbolics Genera - The Best Software Environment Available

#31

Post by _19qg »

hga wrote: post #27
ScottBurson wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BTW I have a different theory about why Lisp Machines failed in the market. Symbolics and LMI were spoiled by the high prices the machines originally commanded (under the influence of the AI bubble and DoD money) and didn't realize how aggressive they needed to be about making them cheap. When the Sun 4/110 came out, it was about 1/5 the price of a comparable Lisp Machine, and faster. Had LispMs been price-competitiv…

Indeed; whatever the mistakes these companies made (also include the TI Explorer), they were zapped first by 32 bit microprocessors (a sustaining technology, but not one adopted quickly enough by Symbolics (plus they picked a bad initial platform to put their microprocessor on)) and then PCs (a classic disruptive technology).

Symbolics had a DOS board for their Lisp Machines. The Ivory ran embedded in Macs and SUNs. They had a PC-based offering: CLOE.

It did not help.

The basic limitations of Genera: complex interwoven software with lots of legacy stuff, single user, single image, no security ... just did not scale and was not on a growth path.

Re: Symbolics Genera - The Best Software Environment Available

#32

Post by sedachv »

lispm wrote: post #24
tangus wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't that reinforce his point? CMUCL & SBCL were released as free software and are still around. Genera isn't.

I haven't said anything against his point. It is just that claiming that Stallman was the only one 'getting free software' is bullshit. He did a lot, but in the Lisp community there were many others which promote(d) free software. Also Stallman did promote Free software, but his promotion of Lisp was mostly limited to Emacs Lisp. There was an attempt with Guile, but that was mostly it. He had worked with the Lisp Mac…

"That Symbolics would have not gone out of business if Genera would have been free software and portable is speculation."

Two different things. I was claiming that Genera would still be around if it was Free Software - this is by virtue of definition. Symbolics being in and out of business has nothing to do with it.

A totally different thing is that I think Symbolics stood a very good chance of surviving if it had made its software more portable. It's a good thing you mention Franz, because they're almost as old as Symbolics, and still around, largely due to the fact that their system is easily portable. They don't waste immense amounts of engineering resources on supporting platforms, but dedicate it to improving features and performance and more importantly responding to customer needs.

"1) repeating the design of the past (with the same problems and maybe slight improved. There has been lots of talk and little action. It's difficult because we don't have the hackers with knowledge and time for that."

It's difficult to do because when you get down to it, Zetalisp sucked for systems programming. Portable Standard Lisp, Interlisp, CMUCL/Allegro/Clozure (anything with LAP and VOPs) provide a much better model for how to build a Lisp runtime.

It's also difficult to do because people like to waste their time imagining how awesome hardware type-checking on FPGAs would be and how the new Lisp OS will have super-duper database-backed storage and network transparency and etc. etc.

"2) doing a new design which gets rid of the limitations of past designs (single user, single image, no security, ...). That's even more difficult."

The key is the namespace. Symbol identity needs to be preserved across users/processes, symbol values don't. This is actually a much simpler problem than you assume.

Re: Symbolics Genera - The Best Software Environment Available

#33

Post by sedachv »

hga wrote: post #25
tangus wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't that reinforce his point? CMUCL & SBCL were released as free software and are still around. Genera isn't.

We shouldn't cherry pick only the examples which support our position. E.g. Allegro Common Lisp has traditionally been about as unfree as possible (e.g. $$$ required to distribute solutions to your customers (for the Lisp runtime)) and it's still around. LispWorks is three years older and is still around. Also, would the MIT Lisp Machine system or Genera have gotten as good as they did as fast as they did without out…

"E.g. Allegro Common Lisp has traditionally been about as unfree as possible (e.g. $$$ required to distribute solutions to your customers (for the Lisp runtime)) and it's still around."

Franz started only a few years after Symbolics. I believe one of the key reasons they're still around is because their Lisp system is easily portable.

"Also, would the MIT Lisp Machine system or Genera have gotten as good as they did as fast as they did without outside funding (government and VC respectively)?"

Stallman was totally right about Symbolics though - they took all of their Lisp work and most of the Lisp community to their grave. There wasn't a lot preventing them from making their software more portable or open, but they made a business decision not to do that, which proved to be disastrous in the long term.

"Or look at the failure of GNU to produce a kernel."

That's because there's already other, better Free Software alternatives out there. Why work on HURD when you can work on Linux or one of the BSDs? And it's important to note that it's a continuing failure - because the project is Free Software, people can continue to work on it if they want.

Re: Symbolics Genera - The Best Software Environment Available

#34

Post by sedachv »

ScottBurson wrote: post #13
sedachv wrote: post #5

Lisp Machines are something that you think is really cool when you first learn about them, then you come to the realization that pining for them is a waste of time. I've had a flash of inspiration recently and have been thinking about Lisp Machines a lot in the past three weeks. But first, a digression. There's an important lesson to be learned about why Symbolics failed. I think Richard Gabriel came to the completel…

BTW I have a different theory about why Lisp Machines failed in the market. Symbolics and LMI were spoiled by the high prices the machines originally commanded (under the influence of the AI bubble and DoD money) and didn't realize how aggressive they needed to be about making them cheap. When the Sun 4/110 came out, it was about 1/5 the price of a comparable Lisp Machine, and faster. Had LispMs been price-competitiv…

I think the fundamental problem of Symbolics was their strategy as a systems company. They were a half-assed hardware company that could not keep up in price or performance and didn't even bother to let others develop system software for it, and they were a half-assed software company that didn't bother to port their software to other computers (a $10,000 plug-in board for a Macintosh does not count as a port).

They were also a pretty good computer graphics and computer algebra software company, and both those divisions got sold off and continued their work for a number of years after Symbolics itself went out of business.

It's interesting to note that by the time of Symbolics' demise (I'm placing it at 1993ish, although that's probably not accurate), even IBM realized that developing systems as integrated software/hardware architectures was not feasible.

Re: Symbolics Genera - The Best Software Environment Available

#35

Post by lispm »

sedachv wrote: post #33
hga wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We shouldn't cherry pick only the examples which support our position. E.g. Allegro Common Lisp has traditionally been about as unfree as possible (e.g. $$$ required to distribute solutions to your customers (for the Lisp runtime)) and it's still around. LispWorks is three years older and is still around. Also, would the MIT Lisp Machine system or Genera have gotten as good as they did as fast as they did without out…

"E.g. Allegro Common Lisp has traditionally been about as unfree as possible (e.g. $$$ required to distribute solutions to your customers (for the Lisp runtime)) and it's still around." Franz started only a few years after Symbolics. I believe one of the key reasons they're still around is because their Lisp system is easily portable. "Also, would the MIT Lisp Machine system or Genera have gotten as good as they did…

Symbolics also had developed a portable Lisp, but closed it. They developers then develop it externally, it was developed and sold as Lucid CL. Lucid CL was highly portable, but the company also did not survive.

Symbolics' problem was not that their software was not portable. Open Genera is a VM and ran on DEC Alpha, it would have been possible to port it to other 64bit machines.

But the business went away. The thing was too costly. It was also not just a Lisp implementation, but a portable OS. As an OS it simply did too much: own networking, own window system, ...

The reason why Franz is still around and Symbolics' is not, is not a question of portability - it is because Franz' Lisp is just a Lisp implementation and concentrates on that - where Genera / Open Genera is an OS, which simply does too much. Why run a TCP stack in Lisp on a machine which already has a TCP stack? Why run a window system on a machine which already has one? Plus the rest of the machine does not benefit from that. If the other software could use the Lisp TCP stack, but it can't.

Re: Symbolics Genera - The Best Software Environment Available

#36

Post by sedachv »

lispm wrote: post #35
sedachv wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"E.g. Allegro Common Lisp has traditionally been about as unfree as possible (e.g. $$$ required to distribute solutions to your customers (for the Lisp runtime)) and it's still around." Franz started only a few years after Symbolics. I believe one of the key reasons they're still around is because their Lisp system is easily portable. "Also, would the MIT Lisp Machine system or Genera have gotten as good as they did…

Symbolics also had developed a portable Lisp, but closed it. They developers then develop it externally, it was developed and sold as Lucid CL. Lucid CL was highly portable, but the company also did not survive. Symbolics' problem was not that their software was not portable. Open Genera is a VM and ran on DEC Alpha, it would have been possible to port it to other 64bit machines. But the business went away. The thing…

Saying that Genera was portable because Open Genera was there is like saying that MS DOS is portable because there's QEMU.

Re: Symbolics Genera - The Best Software Environment Available

#37

Post by lispm »

sedachv wrote: post #36
lispm wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Symbolics also had developed a portable Lisp, but closed it. They developers then develop it externally, it was developed and sold as Lucid CL. Lucid CL was highly portable, but the company also did not survive. Symbolics' problem was not that their software was not portable. Open Genera is a VM and ran on DEC Alpha, it would have been possible to port it to other 64bit machines. But the business went away. The thing…

Saying that Genera was portable because Open Genera was there is like saying that MS DOS is portable because there's QEMU.

Or like any other language implementation with a language-oriented virtual machine: Java/JVM, CLISP, SQUEAK, ...

Re: Symbolics Genera - The Best Software Environment Available

#38

Post by Opie_taylor »

sedachv wrote: post #34
ScottBurson wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BTW I have a different theory about why Lisp Machines failed in the market. Symbolics and LMI were spoiled by the high prices the machines originally commanded (under the influence of the AI bubble and DoD money) and didn't realize how aggressive they needed to be about making them cheap. When the Sun 4/110 came out, it was about 1/5 the price of a comparable Lisp Machine, and faster. Had LispMs been price-competitiv…

I think the fundamental problem of Symbolics was their strategy as a systems company. They were a half-assed hardware company that could not keep up in price or performance and didn't even bother to let others develop system software for it, and they were a half-assed software company that didn't bother to port their software to other computers (a $10,000 plug-in board for a Macintosh does not count as a port). They…

One word: Apple

It's feasible.

Re: Symbolics Genera - The Best Software Environment Available

#39

Post by sedachv »

Opie_taylor wrote: post #38
sedachv wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the fundamental problem of Symbolics was their strategy as a systems company. They were a half-assed hardware company that could not keep up in price or performance and didn't even bother to let others develop system software for it, and they were a half-assed software company that didn't bother to port their software to other computers (a $10,000 plug-in board for a Macintosh does not count as a port). They…

One word: Apple It's feasible.

Apple has never developed their own hardware architecture.

Re: Symbolics Genera - The Best Software Environment Available

#40

Post by sedachv »

lispm wrote: post #37
sedachv wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Saying that Genera was portable because Open Genera was there is like saying that MS DOS is portable because there's QEMU.

Or like any other language implementation with a language-oriented virtual machine: Java/JVM, CLISP, SQUEAK, ...

But Open Genera isn't a language-oriented VM, it's an Ivory emulator. There's a huge difference.
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