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www/gnu rms-lisp.html
|
From: |
Yavor Doganov |
|
Subject: |
www/gnu rms-lisp.html |
|
Date: |
Sat, 10 Mar 2007 08:33:09 +0000 |
CVSROOT: /web/www
Module name: www
Changes by: Yavor Doganov <yavor> 07/03/10 08:33:09
Modified files:
gnu : rms-lisp.html
Log message:
Templated.
CVSWeb URLs:
http://web.cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewcvs/www/gnu/rms-lisp.html?cvsroot=www&r1=1.6&r2=1.7
Patches:
Index: rms-lisp.html
===================================================================
RCS file: /web/www/www/gnu/rms-lisp.html,v
retrieving revision 1.6
retrieving revision 1.7
diff -u -b -r1.6 -r1.7
--- rms-lisp.html 3 Mar 2007 15:09:27 -0000 1.6
+++ rms-lisp.html 10 Mar 2007 08:32:52 -0000 1.7
@@ -1,51 +1,38 @@
-<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//IETF//DTD HTML 3.2//EN">
-<HTML>
-<HEAD>
-<TITLE>My Lisp Experiences and the Development of GNU Emacs - GNU Project -
Free Software Foundation (FSF)</TITLE>
-<LINK REV="made" HREF="mailto:address@hidden";>
-</HEAD>
-<BODY BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" TEXT="#000000" LINK="#1F00FF" ALINK="#FF0000"
VLINK="#9900DD">
-<H3>My Lisp Experiences and the Development of GNU Emacs</H3>
-<H4>(Transcript of Richard Stallman's Speech, 28 Oct 2002,
-at the International Lisp Conference).</H4>
-
-<A HREF="/graphics/agnuhead.html"><IMG SRC="/graphics/gnu-head-sm.jpg"
- ALT=" [image of the Head of a GNU] "
- WIDTH="129" HEIGHT="122"></A>
-
-[
-<!-- Please keep this list alphabetical -->
-<!-- PLEASE UPDATE THE LIST AT THE BOTTOM (OR TOP) OF THE PAGE TOO! -->
- <A HREF="/gnu/rms-lisp.html">English</A>
-<!-- | A HREF="/gnu/rms-lisp.LG.html" LANGUAGE /A -->
-<!-- Please keep this list alphabetical -->
-<!-- PLEASE UPDATE THE LIST AT THE BOTTOM (OR TOP) OF THE PAGE TOO! -->
-]
+<!--#include virtual="/server/header.html" -->
-<hr />
+<title>My Lisp Experiences and the Development of GNU Emacs - GNU Project -
Free Software Foundation (FSF)</title>
-<P>Since none of my usual speeches have anything to do with Lisp, none of
-them were appropriate for today. So I'm going to have to wing it.
+<!--#include virtual="/server/banner.html" -->
+
+<h2>My Lisp Experiences and the Development of GNU Emacs</h2>
+
+<h3>(Transcript of Richard Stallman's Speech, 28 Oct 2002, at the
+International Lisp Conference).</h3>
+
+
+<p>Since none of my usual speeches have anything to do with Lisp, none
+of them were appropriate for today. So I'm going to have to wing it.
Since I've done enough things in my career connected with Lisp I
-should be able to say something interesting.</P>
+should be able to say something interesting.</p>
-<P>My first experience with Lisp was when I read the Lisp 1.5 manual in
-high school. That's when I had my mind blown by the idea that there
+<p>My first experience with Lisp was when I read the Lisp 1.5 manual
+in high school. That's when I had my mind blown by the idea that there
could be a computer language like that. The first time I had a chance
to do anything with Lisp was when I was a freshman at Harvard and I
-wrote a Lisp interpreter for the PDP-11. It was a very small machine
+wrote a Lisp interpreter for the <abbr title="Programmed Data
+Processor">PDP</abbr>-11. It was a very small machine
-- it had something like 8k of memory -- and I managed to write the
interpreter in a thousand instructions. This gave me some room for a
little bit of data. That was before I got to see what real software
-was like, that did real system jobs.</P>
+was like, that did real system jobs.</p>
-<P>I began doing work on a real Lisp implementation with JonL White
-once I started working at MIT. I got hired at the Artificial
-Intelligence Lab not by JonL, but by Russ Noftsker, which was most
-ironic considering what was to come -- he must have really regretted
-that day.</P>
+<p>I began doing work on a real Lisp implementation with JonL White
+once I started working at <abbr title="Massachusetts Institute of
+Technology">MIT</abbr>. I got hired at the Artificial Intelligence Lab
+not by JonL, but by Russ Noftsker, which was most ironic considering
+what was to come -- he must have really regretted that day.</p>
-<P>During the 1970s, before my life became politicized by horrible
+<p>During the 1970s, before my life became politicized by horrible
events, I was just going along making one extension after another for
various programs, and most of them did not have anything to do with
Lisp. But, along the way, I wrote a text editor, Emacs. The
@@ -56,9 +43,9 @@
using and then go on editing with them. So, we had a system that was
useful for things other than programming, and yet you could program it
while you were using it. I don't know if it was the first one of
-those, but it certainly was the first editor like that.</P>
+those, but it certainly was the first editor like that.</p>
-<P>This spirit of building up gigantic, complicated programs to use in
+<p>This spirit of building up gigantic, complicated programs to use in
your own editing, and then exchanging them with other people, fueled
the spirit of free-wheeling cooperation that we had at the AI Lab
then. The idea was that you could give a copy of any program you had
@@ -66,208 +53,212 @@
wanted to use them, they were human knowledge. So even though there
was no organized political thought relating the way we shared software
to the design of Emacs, I'm convinced that there was a connection
-between them, an unconscious connection perhaps. I think that it's
-the nature of the way we lived at the AI Lab that led to Emacs and
-made it what it was</P>
-
-<P>The original Emacs did not have Lisp in it. The lower level
-language the non-interpreted language -- was PDP-10 Assembler. The
-interpreter we wrote in that actually wasn't written for Emacs, it was
-written for TECO. It was our text editor, and was an extremely ugly
-programming language, as ugly as could possibly be. The reason was
-that it wasn't designed to be a programming language, it was designed
-to be an editor and command language. There were commands like `5l',
-meaning `move five lines', or `i' and then a string and then an ESC to
-insert that string. You would type a string that was a series of
-commands, which was called a command string. You would end it with ESC
-ESC, and it would get executed.</P>
+between them, an unconscious connection perhaps. I think that it's the
+nature of the way we lived at the AI Lab that led to Emacs and made it
+what it was</p>
+
+<p>The original Emacs did not have Lisp in it. The lower level
+language the non-interpreted language -- was <abbr>PDP</abbr>-10
+Assembler. The interpreter we wrote in that actually wasn't written
+for Emacs, it was written for <acronym title="Text Editor and
+COrrector">TECO</acronym>. It was our text editor, and was an
+extremely ugly programming language, as ugly as could possibly be. The
+reason was that it wasn't designed to be a programming language, it
+was designed to be an editor and command language. There were commands
+like ‘5l’, meaning ‘move five lines’, or
+‘i’ and then a string and then an ESC to insert that
+string. You would type a string that was a series of commands, which
+was called a command string. You would end it with ESC ESC, and it
+would get executed.</p>
-<P>Well, people wanted to extend this language with programming
+<p>Well, people wanted to extend this language with programming
facilities, so they added some. For instance, one of the first was a
-looping construct, which was < >. You would put those around things
-and it would loop. There were other cryptic commands that could be
-used to conditionally exit the loop. To make Emacs, we added
-facilities to have subroutines with names. Before that, it was sort
-of like Basic, and the subroutines could only have single letters as
+looping construct, which was < >. You would put those around
+things and it would loop. There were other cryptic commands that could
+be used to conditionally exit the loop. To make Emacs, we added
+facilities to have subroutines with names. Before that, it was sort of
+like Basic, and the subroutines could only have single letters as
their names. That was hard to program big programs with, so we added
-code so they could have longer names. Actually, there were some
-rather sophisticated facilities; I think that Lisp got its
-unwind-protect facility from TECO.</P>
+code so they could have longer names. Actually, there were some rather
+sophisticated facilities; I think that Lisp got its unwind-protect
+facility from <acronym>TECO</acronym>.</p>
-<P>We started putting in rather sophisticated facilities, all with the
+<p>We started putting in rather sophisticated facilities, all with the
ugliest syntax you could ever think of, and it worked -- people were
-able to write large programs in it anyway. The obvious lesson was
-that a language like TECO, which wasn't designed to be a programming
-language, was the wrong way to go. The language that you build your
-extensions on shouldn't be thought of as a programming language in
-afterthought; it should be designed as a programming language. In
-fact, we discovered that the best programming language for that
-purpose was Lisp.</P>
+able to write large programs in it anyway. The obvious lesson was that
+a language like <acronym>TECO</acronym>, which wasn't designed to be a
+programming language, was the wrong way to go. The language that you
+build your extensions on shouldn't be thought of as a programming
+language in afterthought; it should be designed as a programming
+language. In fact, we discovered that the best programming language
+for that purpose was Lisp.</p>
-<P>It was Bernie Greenberg, who discovered that it was. He wrote a
+<p>It was Bernie Greenberg, who discovered that it was. He wrote a
version of Emacs in Multics MacLisp, and he wrote his commands in
MacLisp in a straightforward fashion. The editor itself was written
entirely in Lisp. Multics Emacs proved to be a great success --
programming new editing commands was so convenient that even the
secretaries in his office started learning how to use it. They used a
manual someone had written which showed how to extend Emacs, but
-didn't say it was a programming. So the secretaries, who believed
-they couldn't do programming, weren't scared off. They read the
-manual, discovered they could do useful things and they learned to
-program.</P>
-
-<P>So Bernie saw that an application -- a program that does something
-useful for you -- which has Lisp inside it and which you could
-extend by rewriting the Lisp programs, is actually a very good way for
-people to learn programming. It gives them a chance to write small
-programs that are useful for them, which in most arenas you can't
-possibly do. They can get encouragement for their own practical use
--- at the stage where it's the hardest -- where they don't believe
-they can program, until they get to the point where they are
-programmers.</P>
+didn't say it was a programming. So the secretaries, who believed they
+couldn't do programming, weren't scared off. They read the manual,
+discovered they could do useful things and they learned to
+program.</p>
+
+<p>So Bernie saw that an application -- a program that does something
+useful for you -- which has Lisp inside it and which you could extend
+by rewriting the Lisp programs, is actually a very good way for people
+to learn programming. It gives them a chance to write small programs
+that are useful for them, which in most arenas you can't possibly
+do. They can get encouragement for their own practical use -- at the
+stage where it's the hardest -- where they don't believe they can
+program, until they get to the point where they are programmers.</p>
-<P>At that point, people began to wonder how they could get something
+<p>At that point, people began to wonder how they could get something
like this on a platform where they didn't have full service Lisp
implementation. Multics MacLisp had a compiler as well as an
interpreter -- it was a full-fledged Lisp system -- but people wanted
to implement something like that on other systems where they had not
already written a Lisp compiler. Well, if you didn't have the Lisp
compiler you couldn't write the whole editor in Lisp -- it would be
-too slow, especially redisplay, if it had to run interpreted Lisp.
-So we developed a hybrid technique. The idea was to write a Lisp
+too slow, especially redisplay, if it had to run interpreted Lisp. So
+we developed a hybrid technique. The idea was to write a Lisp
interpreter and the lower level parts of the editor together, so that
parts of the editor were built-in Lisp facilities. Those would be
whatever parts we felt we had to optimize. This was a technique that
we had already consciously practiced in the original Emacs, because
there were certain fairly high level features which we re-implemented
-in machine language, making them into TECO primitives. For instance,
-there was a TECO primitive to fill a paragraph (actually, to do most
-of the work of filling a paragraph, because some of the less
-time-consuming parts of the job would be done at the higher level by a
-TECO program). You could do the whole job by writing a TECO program,
-but that was too slow, so we optimized it by putting part of it in
-machine language. We used the same idea here (in the hybrid
-technique), that most of the editor would be written in Lisp, but
-certain parts of it that had to run particularly fast would be written
-at a lower level.</P>
-
-<P>Therefore, when I wrote my second implementation of Emacs, I followed
-the same kind of design. The low level language was not machine
-language anymore, it was C. C was a good, efficient language for
-portable programs to run in a Unix-like operating system. There was a
-Lisp interpreter, but I implemented facilities for special purpose
-editing jobs directly in C -- manipulating editor buffers, inserting
-leading text, reading and writing files, redisplaying the buffer on
-the screen, managing editor windows.</P>
+in machine language, making them into <acronym>TECO</acronym>
+primitives. For instance, there was a <acronym>TECO</acronym>
+primitive to fill a paragraph (actually, to do most of the work of
+filling a paragraph, because some of the less time-consuming parts of
+the job would be done at the higher level by a <acronym>TECO</acronym>
+program). You could do the whole job by writing
+a <acronym>TECO</acronym> program, but that was too slow, so we
+optimized it by putting part of it in machine language. We used the
+same idea here (in the hybrid technique), that most of the editor
+would be written in Lisp, but certain parts of it that had to run
+particularly fast would be written at a lower level.</p>
+
+<p>Therefore, when I wrote my second implementation of Emacs, I
+followed the same kind of design. The low level language was not
+machine language anymore, it was C. C was a good, efficient language
+for portable programs to run in a Unix-like operating system. There
+was a Lisp interpreter, but I implemented facilities for special
+purpose editing jobs directly in C -- manipulating editor buffers,
+inserting leading text, reading and writing files, redisplaying the
+buffer on the screen, managing editor windows.</p>
-<P>Now, this was not the first Emacs that was written in C and ran on
+<p>Now, this was not the first Emacs that was written in C and ran on
Unix. The first was written by James Gosling, and was referred to as
GosMacs. A strange thing happened with him. In the beginning, he
seemed to be influenced by the same spirit of sharing and cooperation
of the original Emacs. I first released the original Emacs to people
-at MIT. Someone wanted to port it to run on Twenex -- it originally
-only ran on the incompatible timesharing system we used at MIT. They
-ported it to Twenex, which meant that there were a few hundred
-installations around the world that could potentially use it. We
-started distributing it to them, with the rule that ``you had to send
-back all of your improvements'' so we could all benefit. No one ever
-tried to enforce that, but as far as I know people did cooperate.</P>
+at <abbr>MIT</abbr>. Someone wanted to port it to run on Twenex -- it
+originally only ran on the incompatible timesharing system we used
+at <abbr>MIT</abbr>. They ported it to Twenex, which meant that there
+were a few hundred installations around the world that could
+potentially use it. We started distributing it to them, with the rule
+that “you had to send back all of your improvements” so we
+could all benefit. No one ever tried to enforce that, but as far as I
+know people did cooperate.</p>
-<P>Gosling did, at first, seem to participate in this spirit. He wrote
+<p>Gosling did, at first, seem to participate in this spirit. He wrote
in a manual that he called the program Emacs hoping that others in the
community would improve it until it was worthy of that name. That's
the right approach to take towards a community -- to ask them to join
-in and make the program better. But after that he seemed to change
-the spirit, and sold it to a company.</P>
+in and make the program better. But after that he seemed to change the
+spirit, and sold it to a company.</p>
-<P>At the time that I was working on the GNU system (a free software
-Unix-like operating system that many people erroneously call "Linux").
-There was no free software Emacs editor that ran on Unix. I did,
-however, have a friend who had participated in developing Gosling's
-Emacs. Gosling had given him, by email, permission to distribute his
-own version. He proposed to me that I use that version. Then I
-discovered that Gosling's Emacs did not have a real Lisp. It had a
-programming language that was known as `mocklisp', which looks
-syntactically like Lisp, but didn't have the data structures of Lisp.
-So programs were not data, and vital elements of Lisp were missing.
-Its data structures were strings, numbers and a few other specialized
-things.</P>
+<p>At the time that I was working on the GNU system (a free software
+Unix-like operating system that many people erroneously call
+“Linux”). There was no free software Emacs editor that
+ran on Unix. I did, however, have a friend who had participated in
+developing Gosling's Emacs. Gosling had given him, by email,
+permission to distribute his own version. He proposed to me that I use
+that version. Then I discovered that Gosling's Emacs did not have a
+real Lisp. It had a programming language that was known as
+‘mocklisp’, which looks syntactically like Lisp, but
+didn't have the data structures of Lisp. So programs were not data,
+and vital elements of Lisp were missing. Its data structures were
+strings, numbers and a few other specialized things.</p>
-<P>I concluded I couldn't use it and had to replace it all, the first
+<p>I concluded I couldn't use it and had to replace it all, the first
step of which was to write an actual Lisp interpreter. I gradually
adapted every part of the editor based on real Lisp data structures,
rather than ad hoc data structures, making the data structures of the
internals of the editor exposable and manipulable by the user's Lisp
-programs.</P>
+programs.</p>
-<P>The one exception was redisplay. For a long time, redisplay was sort
-of an alternate world. The editor would enter the world of redisplay
-and things would go on with very special data structures that were not
-safe for garbage collection, not safe for interruption, and you
-couldn't run any Lisp programs during that. We've changed that since
--- it's now possible to run Lisp code during redisplay. It's a quite
-a convenient thing.</P>
-
-<P>This second Emacs program was `free software' in the modern sense of
-the term -- it was part of an explicit political campaign to make
-software free. The essence of this campaign was that everybody should
-be free to do the things we did in the old days at MIT, working
-together on software and working with whomever wanted to work with us.
-That is the basis for the free software movement -- the experience I
-had, the life that I've lived at the MIT AI lab -- to be working on
-human knowledge, and not be standing in the way of anybody's further
-using and further disseminating human knowledge.</P>
-
-<P>At the time, you could make a computer that was about the same price
-range as other computers that weren't meant for Lisp, except that it
-would run Lisp much faster than they would, and with full type
+<p>The one exception was redisplay. For a long time, redisplay was
+sort of an alternate world. The editor would enter the world of
+redisplay and things would go on with very special data structures
+that were not safe for garbage collection, not safe for interruption,
+and you couldn't run any Lisp programs during that. We've changed that
+since -- it's now possible to run Lisp code during redisplay. It's a
+quite a convenient thing.</p>
+
+<p>This second Emacs program was ‘free software’ in the
+modern sense of the term -- it was part of an explicit political
+campaign to make software free. The essence of this campaign was that
+everybody should be free to do the things we did in the old days
+at <abbr>MIT</abbr>, working together on software and working with
+whomever wanted to work with us. That is the basis for the free
+software movement -- the experience I had, the life that I've lived at
+the <abbr>MIT</abbr> AI lab -- to be working on human knowledge, and
+not be standing in the way of anybody's further using and further
+disseminating human knowledge.</p>
+
+<p>At the time, you could make a computer that was about the same
+price range as other computers that weren't meant for Lisp, except
+that it would run Lisp much faster than they would, and with full type
checking in every operation as well. Ordinary computers typically
forced you to choose between execution speed and good typechecking.
So yes, you could have a Lisp compiler and run your programs fast, but
when they tried to take car of a number, it got nonsensical results
-and eventually crashed at some point.</P>
+and eventually crashed at some point.</p>
-<P>The Lisp machine was able to execute instructions about as fast as
+<p>The Lisp machine was able to execute instructions about as fast as
those other machines, but each instruction -- a car instruction would
do data typechecking -- so when you tried to get the car of a number
in a compiled program, it would give you an immediate error. We built
the machine and had a Lisp operating system for it. It was written
almost entirely in Lisp, the only exceptions being parts written in
the microcode. People became interested in manufacturing them, which
-meant they should start a company.</P>
+meant they should start a company.</p>
-<P>There were two different ideas about what this company should be like.
-Greenblatt wanted to start what he called a ``hacker'' company. This
-meant it would be a company run by hackers and would operate in a way
-conducive to hackers. Another goal was to maintain the AI Lab
-culture. Unfortunately, Greenblatt didn't have any business
-experience, so other people in the Lisp machine group said they
-doubted whether he could succeed. They thought that his plan to avoid
-outside investment wouldn't work.</P>
+<p>There were two different ideas about what this company should be
+like. Greenblatt wanted to start what he called a
+“hacker” company. This meant it would be a company run by
+hackers and would operate in a way conducive to hackers. Another goal
+was to maintain the AI Lab culture. Unfortunately, Greenblatt didn't
+have any business experience, so other people in the Lisp machine
+group said they doubted whether he could succeed. They thought that
+his plan to avoid outside investment wouldn't work.</p>
-<P>Why did he want to avoid outside investment? Because when a company
+<p>Why did he want to avoid outside investment? Because when a company
has outside investors, they take control and they don't let you have
any scruples. And eventually, if you have any scruples, they also
-replace you as the manager.</P>
+replace you as the manager.</p>
-<P>So Greenblatt had the idea that he would find a customer who would pay
-in advance to buy the parts. They would build machines and deliver
+<p>So Greenblatt had the idea that he would find a customer who would
+pay in advance to buy the parts. They would build machines and deliver
them; with profits from those parts, they would then be able to buy
parts for a few more machines, sell those and then buy parts for a
larger number of machines, and so on. The other people in the group
-thought that this couldn't possibly work.</P>
+thought that this couldn't possibly work.</p>
-<P>Greenblatt then recruited Russell Noftsker, the man who had hired me,
-who had subsequently left the AI Lab and created a successful company.
-Russell was believed to have an aptitude for business. He
+<p>Greenblatt then recruited Russell Noftsker, the man who had hired
+me, who had subsequently left the AI Lab and created a successful
+company. Russell was believed to have an aptitude for business. He
demonstrated this aptitude for business by saying to the other people
-in the group, ``Let's ditch Greenblatt, forget his ideas, and we'll
-make another company.'' Stabbing in the back, clearly a real
-businessman. Those people decided they would form a company called
-Symbolics. They would get outside investment, not have scruples,
-and do everything possible to win.</P>
+in the group, “Let's ditch Greenblatt, forget his ideas, and
+we'll make another company.” Stabbing in the back, clearly a
+real businessman. Those people decided they would form a company
+called Symbolics. They would get outside investment, not have
+scruples, and do everything possible to win.</p>
-<P>But Greenblatt didn't give up. He and the few people loyal to him
+<p>But Greenblatt didn't give up. He and the few people loyal to him
decided to start Lisp Machines Inc. anyway and go ahead with their
plans. And what do you know, they succeeded! They got the first
customer and were paid in advance. They built machines and sold them,
@@ -276,179 +267,188 @@
group. Symbolics also got off to a successful start, so you had two
competing Lisp machine companies. When Symbolics saw that LMI was not
going to fall flat on its face, they started looking for ways to
-destroy it.</P>
+destroy it.</p>
-<P>Thus, the abandonment of our lab was followed by ``war'' in our lab.
-The abandonment happened when Symbolics hired away all the hackers,
-except me and the few who worked at LMI part-time. Then they invoked
-a rule and eliminated people who worked part-time for MIT, so they had
-to leave entirely, which left only me. The AI lab was now helpless.
-And MIT had made a very foolish arrangement with these two companies.
-It was a three-way contract where both companies licensed the use of
-Lisp machine system sources. These companies were supposed to let MIT
-use their changes. But it didn't say in the contract that MIT was
-entitled to put them into the MIT Lisp machine systems that both
-companies had licensed. Nobody had envisioned that the AI lab's
-hacker group would be wiped out, but it was.</P>
-
-<P>So Symbolics came up with a plan. They said to the lab, ``We will
-continue making our changes to the system available for you to use,
-but you can't put it into the MIT Lisp machine system. Instead, we'll
-give you access to Symbolics' Lisp machine system, and you can run it,
-but that's all you can do.''</P>
-
-<P>This, in effect, meant that they demanded that we had to choose a side,
-and use either the MIT version of the system or the Symbolics version.
-Whichever choice we made determined which system our improvements went
-to. If we worked on and improved the Symbolics version, we would be
-supporting Symbolics alone. If we used and improved the MIT version
-of the system, we would be doing work available to both companies, but
-Symbolics saw that we would be supporting LMI because we would be
-helping them continue to exist. So we were not allowed to be neutral
-anymore.</P>
+<p>Thus, the abandonment of our lab was followed by “war”
+in our lab. The abandonment happened when Symbolics hired away all
+the hackers, except me and the few who worked at LMI part-time. Then
+they invoked a rule and eliminated people who worked part-time
+for <abbr>MIT</abbr>, so they had to leave entirely, which left only
+me. The AI lab was now helpless. And <abbr>MIT</abbr> had made a very
+foolish arrangement with these two companies. It was a three-way
+contract where both companies licensed the use of Lisp machine system
+sources. These companies were supposed to let <abbr>MIT</abbr> use
+their changes. But it didn't say in the contract that <abbr>MIT</abbr>
+was entitled to put them into the <abbr>MIT</abbr> Lisp machine
+systems that both companies had licensed. Nobody had envisioned that
+the AI lab's hacker group would be wiped out, but it was.</p>
+
+<p>So Symbolics came up with a plan. They said to the lab, “We
+will continue making our changes to the system available for you to
+use, but you can't put it into the <abbr>MIT</abbr> Lisp machine
+system. Instead, we'll give you access to Symbolics' Lisp machine
+system, and you can run it, but that's all you can do.”</p>
+
+<p>This, in effect, meant that they demanded that we had to choose a
+side, and use either the <abbr>MIT</abbr> version of the system or the
+Symbolics version. Whichever choice we made determined which system
+our improvements went to. If we worked on and improved the Symbolics
+version, we would be supporting Symbolics alone. If we used and
+improved the <abbr>MIT</abbr> version of the system, we would be doing
+work available to both companies, but Symbolics saw that we would be
+supporting LMI because we would be helping them continue to exist. So
+we were not allowed to be neutral anymore.</p>
-<P>Up until that point, I hadn't taken the side of either company,
+<p>Up until that point, I hadn't taken the side of either company,
although it made me miserable to see what had happened to our
-community and the software. But now, Symbolics had forced the
-issue. So, in an effort to help keep Lisp Machines going -- I began
+community and the software. But now, Symbolics had forced the issue.
+So, in an effort to help keep Lisp Machines going -- I began
duplicating all of the improvements Symbolics had made to the Lisp
machine system. I wrote the equivalent improvements again myself
-(i.e., the code was my own).</P>
+(i.e., the code was my own).</p>
-<P>After a while, I came to the conclusion that it would be best if I
+<p>After a while, I came to the conclusion that it would be best if I
didn't even look at their code. When they made a beta announcement
that gave the release notes, I would see what the features were and
then implement them. By the time they had a real release, I did
-too.</P>
+too.</p>
-<P>In this way, for two years, I prevented them from wiping out Lisp
+<p>In this way, for two years, I prevented them from wiping out Lisp
Machines Incorporated, and the two companies went on. But, I didn't
want to spend years and years punishing someone, just thwarting an
evil deed. I figured they had been punished pretty thoroughly because
they were stuck with competition that was not leaving or going to
-disappear. Meanwhile, it was time to start building a new community
-to replace the one that their actions and others had wiped out.</P>
+disappear. Meanwhile, it was time to start building a new community to
+replace the one that their actions and others had wiped out.</p>
-<P>The Lisp community in the 70s was not limited to the MIT AI Lab, and
-the hackers were not all at MIT. The war that Symbolics started was
-what wiped out MIT, but there were other events going on then. There
+<p>The Lisp community in the 70s was not limited to
+the <abbr>MIT</abbr> AI Lab, and the hackers were not all
+at <abbr>MIT</abbr>. The war that Symbolics started was what wiped
+out <abbr>MIT</abbr>, but there were other events going on then. There
were people giving up on cooperation and together, this wiped out the
-community and there wasn't much left.</P>
+community and there wasn't much left.</p>
-<P>Once I stopped punishing Symbolics, I had to figure out what to do
+<p>Once I stopped punishing Symbolics, I had to figure out what to do
next. I had to make a free operating system, that was clear -- the
only way that people could work together and share was with a free
-operating system.</P>
+operating system.</p>
-<P>At first, I thought of making a Lisp-based system, but I realized that
-wouldn't be a good idea technically. To have something like the Lisp
-machine system, you needed special purpose microcode. That's what
+<p>At first, I thought of making a Lisp-based system, but I realized
+that wouldn't be a good idea technically. To have something like the
+Lisp machine system, you needed special purpose microcode. That's what
made it possible to run programs as fast as other computers would run
their programs and still get the benefit of typechecking. Without
that, you would be reduced to something like the Lisp compilers for
-other machines. The programs would be faster, but unstable. Now
-that's okay if you're running one program on a timesharing system --
-if one program crashes, that's not a disaster, that's something your
-program occasionally does. But that didn't make it good for writing
-the operating system in, so I rejected the idea of making a system
-like the Lisp machine.</P>
-
-<P>I decided instead to make a Unix-like operating system that would have
-Lisp implementations to run as user programs. The kernel wouldn't be
-written in Lisp, but we'd have Lisp. So the development of that
+other machines. The programs would be faster, but unstable. Now that's
+okay if you're running one program on a timesharing system -- if one
+program crashes, that's not a disaster, that's something your program
+occasionally does. But that didn't make it good for writing the
+operating system in, so I rejected the idea of making a system like
+the Lisp machine.</p>
+
+<p>I decided instead to make a Unix-like operating system that would
+have Lisp implementations to run as user programs. The kernel wouldn't
+be written in Lisp, but we'd have Lisp. So the development of that
operating system, the GNU operating system, is what led me to write
the GNU Emacs. In doing this, I aimed to make the absolute minimal
possible Lisp implementation. The size of the programs was a
-tremendous concern.</P>
+tremendous concern.</p>
-<P>There were people in those days, in 1985, who had one-megabyte
+<p>There were people in those days, in 1985, who had one-megabyte
machines without virtual memory. They wanted to be able to use GNU
-Emacs. This meant I had to keep the program as small as possible.</P>
+Emacs. This meant I had to keep the program as small as possible.</p>
-<P>For instance, at the time the only looping construct was `while',
-which was extremely simple. There was no way to break out of the
-`while' statement, you just had to do a catch and a throw, or test a
-variable that ran the loop. That shows how far I was pushing to keep
-things small. We didn't have `caar' and `cadr' and so on; ``squeeze out
-everything possible'' was the spirit of GNU Emacs, the spirit of Emacs
-Lisp, from the beginning.</P>
-
-<P>Obviously, machines are bigger now, and we don't do it that way
-anymore. We put in `caar' and `cadr' and so on, and we might put in
-another looping construct one of these days. We're willing to extend
-it some now, but we don't want to extend it to the level of common
-Lisp. I implemented Common Lisp once on the Lisp machine, and I'm not
-all that happy with it. One thing I don't like terribly much is
-keyword arguments. They don't seem quite Lispy to me; I'll do it
-sometimes but I minimize the times when I do that.</P>
+<p>For instance, at the time the only looping construct was
+‘while’, which was extremely simple. There was no way to
+break out of the ‘while’ statement, you just had to do a
+catch and a throw, or test a variable that ran the loop. That shows
+how far I was pushing to keep things small. We didn't have
+‘caar’ and ‘cadr’ and so on; “squeeze
+out everything possible” was the spirit of GNU Emacs, the spirit
+of Emacs Lisp, from the beginning.</p>
+
+<p>Obviously, machines are bigger now, and we don't do it that way
+anymore. We put in ‘caar’ and ‘cadr’ and so
+on, and we might put in another looping construct one of these
+days. We're willing to extend it some now, but we don't want to extend
+it to the level of common Lisp. I implemented Common Lisp once on the
+Lisp machine, and I'm not all that happy with it. One thing I don't
+like terribly much is keyword arguments. They don't seem quite Lispy
+to me; I'll do it sometimes but I minimize the times when I do
+that.</p>
-<P>That was not the end of the GNU projects involved with Lisp. Later on
-around 1995, we were looking into starting a graphical desktop
+<p>That was not the end of the GNU projects involved with Lisp. Later
+on around 1995, we were looking into starting a graphical desktop
project. It was clear that for the programs on the desktop, we wanted
a programming language to write a lot of it in to make it easily
-extensible, like the editor. The question was what it should be.</P>
+extensible, like the editor. The question was what it should be.</p>
-<P>At the time, TCL was being pushed heavily for this purpose. I had a
-very low opinion of TCL, basically because it wasn't Lisp. It looks a
-tiny bit like Lisp, but semantically it isn't, and it's not as clean.
-Then someone showed me an ad where Sun was trying to hire somebody to
-work on TCL to make it the ``de-facto standard extension language'' of
-the world. And I thought, ``We've got to stop that from happening.''
-So we started to make Scheme the standard extensibility language for
+<p>At the time, <acronym title="Tool Command Language">TCL</acronym>
+was being pushed heavily for this purpose. I had a very low opinion
+of <acronym>TCL</acronym>, basically because it wasn't Lisp. It looks
+a tiny bit like Lisp, but semantically it isn't, and it's not as
+clean. Then someone showed me an ad where Sun was trying to hire
+somebody to work on <acronym>TCL</acronym> to make it the
+“de-facto standard extension language” of the world. And I
+thought, “We've got to stop that from happening.” So we
+started to make Scheme the standard extensibility language for
GNU. Not Common Lisp, because it was too large. The idea was that we
would have a Scheme interpreter designed to be linked into
-applications in the same way TCL was linked into applications. We
-would then recommend that as the preferred extensibility package for
-all Gnu programs.</P>
-
-<P>There's an interesting benefit you can get from using such a powerful
-language as a version of Lisp as your primary extensibility language.
-You can implement other languages by translating them into your
-primary language. If your primary language is TCL, you can't very
-easily implement Lisp by translating it into TCL. But if your primary
+applications in the same way <acronym>TCL</acronym> was linked into
+applications. We would then recommend that as the preferred
+extensibility package for all GNU programs.</p>
+
+<p>There's an interesting benefit you can get from using such a
+powerful language as a version of Lisp as your primary extensibility
+language. You can implement other languages by translating them into
+your primary language. If your primary language
+is <acronym>TCL</acronym>, you can't very easily implement Lisp by
+translating it into <acronym>TCL</acronym>. But if your primary
language is Lisp, it's not that hard to implement other things by
translating them. Our idea was that if each extensible application
-supported Scheme, you could write an implementation of TCL or Python
-or Perl in Scheme that translates that program into Scheme. Then you
-could load that into any application and customize it in your favorite
-language and it would work with other customizations as well.</P>
-
-<P>As long as the extensibility languages are weak, the users have to use
-only the language you provided them. Which means that people who love
-any given language have to compete for the choice of the developers of
-applications -- saying ``Please, application developer, put my
-language into your application, not his language.'' Then the users
-get no choices at all -- whichever application they're using comes
-with one language and they're stuck with [that language]. But when
-you have a powerful language that can implement others by translating
-into it, then you give the user a choice of language and we don't have
-to have a language war anymore. That's what we're hoping `Guile', our
-scheme interpreter, will do. We had a person working last summer
-finishing up a translator from Python to Scheme. I don't know if it's
-entirely finished yet, but for anyone interested in this project,
-please get in touch. So that's the plan we have for the future.</P>
-
-<P>I haven't been speaking about free software, but let me briefly tell
-you a little bit about what that means. Free software does not refer
-to price; it doesn't mean that you get it for free. (You may have
-paid for a copy, or gotten a copy gratis.) It means that you have
+supported Scheme, you could write an implementation
+of <acronym>TCL</acronym> or Python or Perl in Scheme that translates
+that program into Scheme. Then you could load that into any
+application and customize it in your favorite language and it would
+work with other customizations as well.</p>
+
+<p>As long as the extensibility languages are weak, the users have to
+use only the language you provided them. Which means that people who
+love any given language have to compete for the choice of the
+developers of applications -- saying “Please, application
+developer, put my language into your application, not his
+language.” Then the users get no choices at all -- whichever
+application they're using comes with one language and they're stuck
+with [that language]. But when you have a powerful language that can
+implement others by translating into it, then you give the user a
+choice of language and we don't have to have a language war
+anymore. That's what we're hoping ‘Guile’, our scheme
+interpreter, will do. We had a person working last summer finishing up
+a translator from Python to Scheme. I don't know if it's entirely
+finished yet, but for anyone interested in this project, please get in
+touch. So that's the plan we have for the future.</p>
+
+<p>I haven't been speaking about free software, but let me briefly
+tell you a little bit about what that means. Free software does not
+refer to price; it doesn't mean that you get it for free. (You may
+have paid for a copy, or gotten a copy gratis.) It means that you have
freedom as a user. The crucial thing is that you are free to run the
program, free to study what it does, free to change it to suit your
needs, free to redistribute the copies of others and free to publish
-improved, extended versions. This is what free software means. If
-you are using a non-free program, you have lost crucial freedom, so
-don't ever do that.</P>
+improved, extended versions. This is what free software means. If you
+are using a non-free program, you have lost crucial freedom, so don't
+ever do that.</p>
-<P>The purpose of the GNU project is to make it easier for people to
+<p>The purpose of the GNU project is to make it easier for people to
reject freedom-trampling, user-dominating, non-free software by
providing free software to replace it. For those who don't have the
moral courage to reject the non-free software, when that means some
practical inconvenience, what we try to do is give a free alternative
so that you can move to freedom with less of a mess and less of a
sacrifice in practical terms. The less sacrifice the better. We want
-to make it easier for you to live in freedom, to cooperate.</P>
+to make it easier for you to live in freedom, to cooperate.</p>
-<P>This is a matter of the freedom to cooperate. We're used to
+<p>This is a matter of the freedom to cooperate. We're used to
thinking of freedom and cooperation with society as if they are
opposites. But here they're on the same side. With free software you
are free to cooperate with other people as well as free to help
@@ -456,64 +456,87 @@
keeping people divided. You're not allowed to share with them, you're
not free to cooperate or help society, anymore than you're free to
help yourself. Divided and helpless is the state of users using
-non-free software.</P>
+non-free software.</p>
-<P>We've produced a tremendous range of free software. We've done what
+<p>We've produced a tremendous range of free software. We've done what
people said we could never do; we have two operating systems of free
software. We have many applications and we obviously have a lot
farther to go. So we need your help. I would like to ask you to
volunteer for the GNU project; help us develop free software for more
-jobs. Take a look at <A
HREF="http://www.gnu.org/help";>http://www.gnu.org/help</A> to find suggestions
for
-how to help. If you want to order things, there's a link to that from
-the home page. If you want to read about philosophical issues, look in
-/philosophy. If you're looking for free software to use, look in
-/directory, which lists about 1900 packages now (which is a fraction
-of all the free software out there). Please write more and contribute
-to us. My book of essays, ``Free Software and Free Society'', is on
-sale and can be purchased at
-<A HREF="http://www.gnu.org/";>www.gnu.org</A>. Happy hacking!</P>
-
-
-<HR>
-
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-
-<P>
-Return to <A HREF="/home.html">GNU's home page</A>.
-<P>
-
-Please send FSF & GNU inquiries & questions to
-
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-<P>
-
-Please send comments on these web pages to
-
-<A HREF="mailto:address@hidden";><EM>address@hidden</EM></A>,
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-<A HREF="mailto:address@hidden";><EM>address@hidden</EM></A>.
-<P>
+jobs. Take a look at <a href="/help/">http://www.gnu.org/help</a> to
+find suggestions for how to help. If you want to order things, there's
+a link to that from the home page. If you want to read about
+philosophical issues, look in /philosophy. If you're looking for free
+software to use, look in /directory, which lists about 1900 packages
+now (which is a fraction of all the free software out there). Please
+write more and contribute to us. My book of essays, “Free
+Software and Free Society”, is on sale and can be purchased at
+<a href="http://www.gnu.org/";>www.gnu.org</a>. Happy hacking!</p>
+
+</div>
+
+
+<!--#include virtual="/server/footer.html" -->
+
+<div id="footer">
+
+<p><a href="/gnu/gnu.html">More about the GNU Project</a></p>
+
+<p>
+Please send FSF & GNU inquiries to
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+There are also <a href="/contact/">other ways to contact</a>
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+<br />
+Please send broken links and other corrections (or suggestions) to
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+
+<p>
+Please see the
+<a href="/server/standards/README.translations">Translations
+README</a> for information on coordinating and submitting
+translations of this article.
+</p>
+<p>
Copyright © 2003, 2007 Free Software Foundation, Inc.,
-51 Franklin St, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301, USA
-<P>
-Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is
+</p>
+<address>51 Franklin St, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301, USA</address>
+<p>Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is
permitted in any medium, provided this notice is preserved.
-<P>
+</p>
+
+<p>
Updated:
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-$Date: 2007/03/03 15:09:27 $ $Author: yavor $
+$Date: 2007/03/10 08:32:52 $
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+
+<div id="translations">
+<h3>Translations of this page:</h3>
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+<!-- If you add a new language here, please -->
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+<!-- English -->
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