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LispM Source Released Under 'BSD Like' License

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the stroll-down-memory-tape-lane dept.

mschaef writes "Announced on Bill Clementson's Blog, Brad Parker has stated that he has 'permission from MIT to release all the LISPM source code with a "BSD like" source license.'" Zach Beane has also set up a torrent for easy download.

6 of 336 comments (clear)

  1. But I thought... by pmike_bauer · · Score: 5, Interesting
    • Tar file of the tape images, extracted files and extract software, 71Mbytes

    This software was written in the 80s. Back then, all the programmers were supposed to have supernatural abilities and could, like, fit an entire operating system in 640K! What is this??!!! A modern JVM download is only 15MB.
    --
    I read /. for the (Score:-1, Conservative) comments.
  2. Nice... by lpangelrob · · Score: 4, Interesting
    ...they found it on 9-track tapes in the basement. Excellent.

    Does that make this the oldest software to be released under an "open-sourceish" license?

    --
    -Rob

    Biblical fiscal responsibility

  3. Richard Stallman and the Lisp Machine by mschaef · · Score: 4, Interesting

    This was in the body of the story, but maybe it's more appropriate elsewhere. One of the more interesting links in the blog posts about this source code release was a transcript of a speech by RMS on how the Lisp Machine influenced his decision to start the free software movement. Interesting reading.

  4. Re:Great News! by Abcd1234 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Sounds like Squeak to me.

  5. Re:Why design a new language? by sickofthisshit · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I didn't miss your point.

    Passing around functions is something Lisp is perfectly capable of doing. (And without any performance hit, because our anonymous functions are compiled to machine code just like our named functions.) But--guess what?--we don't use it to implement control structures, even though we could. One quickly finds that the function-passing style is LESS readable and LESS convenient than real Lisp macros.

    You plainly misrepresent Lisp macros if you claim they are about moving basic operations to read-time instead of run-time. They implement program *transformations* that BY DEFINITION must occur at code-reading time (but before compile-time). By the time the program actually runs, it is too late to rewrite it, after all.

  6. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Comment removed based on user account deletion